When to test for tapeworm?

This is an automatically translated article.

Testing for tapeworms in healthy and asymptomatic children is not necessary. Because even if the result is positive, this is only a sign that the child has been exposed, not necessarily infected with tapeworm.

1. Risk of tapeworm infection

Worms are present everywhere in the environment, in soil, unwashed vegetables, in feces, animal saliva, and untreated meat. Therefore, the issue of food hygiene and living environment hygiene is very important.
Currently, tapeworm disease (or pork tapeworm) has appeared in 51 provinces and cities across the country. To diagnose tapeworm, doctors usually rely on clinical signs (manifestations of the disease on the body) and diagnostic signs on subclinical (performing diagnostic procedures and tests). Some cases of disease symptoms are not clear, it is not necessary to do a test for swine flu.

2. Only test for tapeworms when necessary

For the recent epidemic of tapeworm disease, it is completely unnecessary for people to take their children to have their blood drawn for testing for tapeworms and does not make much sense in disease prevention.
The reason is because, current screening blood test only detects antibodies and antigens of tapeworm larvae in serum, in healthy children without symptoms, it is meaningless to perform a test for tapeworm. . If the result is positive, it can only confirm that the child has been exposed to tapeworm eggs due to eating food and drinking water containing tapeworm eggs, not from eating pork containing pork tapeworm larvae. .
People eat undercooked pork containing cysts (rice pigs), when moving to the stomach, the larvae will escape the cysts and attach to the small intestine wall, then develop into adult tapeworms. In order to confirm that the patient is infected with adult flukes from eating pork and rice, a stool sample must be taken for testing to see if adult tapeworms are found. At that time, if a tapeworm is observed, it is confirmed that the patient has adult fluke disease.

On the other hand, only people at risk or symptoms of tapeworm infection, such as epilepsy, unexplained vision disturbances, digestive or malabsorption disorders, patients with suspected larvae fluke attacks on the brain (such as convulsions, coma, weakness in the limbs), abnormal nodules appear under the skin... then it is necessary to conduct a test to find the larvae of the tapeworm. Even then, the patient must do many other tests to confirm the risk of tapeworm infection, including procedures such as ultrasound, tomography, biopsy...
If only screening blood tests will give A positive result for tapeworm is not enough evidence to confirm that there is larval disease and the doctor is only allowed to treat when the symptoms are clear, otherwise, only monitor. In addition, testing for tapeworms also has a cross-positive rate between tapeworms and some other parasites. In the case of children without symptoms, that is, at most, they have only been exposed to the disease, it is not necessary to treat them. Diagnosing someone with cysticercosis is based on many different factors, not just serological confirmation.
The doctor emphasized, all types of worms that enter the body need an incubation period to develop, then the body will be able to create antibodies, but can't eat meat today. Pigs infected with tapeworms will get sick tomorrow.
Moreover, most worms when entering the human body, after a while, the body will eliminate them on its own, but the fluke test is still positive. Sometimes, the test is positive but in fact there is no disease in the person, no worms at all. On the other hand, the test for helminths is very confusing because the infection with this worm has long since passed, but the test is found to be positive for other helminths such as helminths in dogs and cats.

3. Properly prevent pork tapeworms

Doctors recommend everyone to have regular deworming every 3 to 6 months. In addition, people need to have the habit of eating cooked and drinking boiling water, and using clean and safe food. If it is suspected that a child has eaten meat contaminated with worms, then give an anti-worm medication, there is no need to worry about running back and forth to do a test for swine flu. For common helminths, albendazol, mebendazol, pyrantel can be used. If infected with tapeworm, the patient can take praziquantel or albendazol.
According to the Department of Preventive Medicine, tapeworm larvae will die when cooked to a high temperature of 75oC for 5 minutes, or boiled within 2 minutes. Therefore, always eating cooked food will prevent tapeworm disease.

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