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Symptoms of Ascaridosis
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
The incubation period of ascariasis is 2-3 weeks. With low-intensity invasion, the early stage of the disease is subclinical. In children of preschool and early school age, the acute phase of the disease is usually manifested by fever or high subfebrile condition, skin exudative rashes, sometimes pains throughout the abdomen, nausea, upset of the stool. It is often noted pulmonary syndrome in the form of dry or wet cough with the development of "flying" infiltrates, less often - pneumonic foci, eosinophilia of blood up to 20-40% against leukocytosis to 12-15 x 10 9 / l. With a particularly massive invasion, in addition to pneumonia and pleuropneumonia, granulomatous hepatitis with hepatosplenomegaly, mild jaundice, increased activity of transaminases, alkaline phosphatase, bilirubin levels, all globulin fractions and shifts in sediment samples can occur in the blood serum. Do not exclude heart lesions with tachycardia, deafness of cardiac tones, signs of dystrophic changes in the myocardium. Without desensitizing and active specific therapy in young children, massive invasion can lead to death.
In the chronic stage, ascariasis manifests itself periodically with epigastric pains, around the navel, sometimes in the right iliac region, a decrease in appetite, and, more rarely, an increased sense of hunger, an unstable stool. Sometimes only by constipation. In infants, weakened by malnutrition, there are diarrhea and stools no more than 2-3 times a day with an admixture of mucus, without blood. With massive invasion in young children, paleness of the skin, mucous membranes, decreased nutrition, delayed physical development; in the serum, moderate anemia, pronounced eosinophilia, a tendency to leukopenia, an increase in ESR to 15-20 mm / h, and hypoalbuminemia are revealed.
There are acute stage (migratory), intestinal stage and stage of complications. In the acute stage, the disease can be limited to general allergic events or develops pulmonary syndrome or severe polyorganism (hepatitis, myocardial dystrophy, pneumonia, pleuropneumonia, pleurisy). In a chronic stage, gastroenteric or asthenic syndrome may predominate.
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