Intestinal parasitic infections in hosted Saharawi children

ABSTRACT

Literatures on intestinal parasitic infections in Saharawi children were scarce and distributed in non parasitological journals. This was the first article that specifically highlighted on the prevalence of these infections in 270 Saharawi children aged from 6 to 12 years hosted in Spain. Six different intestinal parasites were identified in this study and 78, 46, 40, 24, 13 and 5 were positive for Giardia lamblia (29%), Entamoeba coli (17%), Blastocystis hominis (15%), Endolimax nana (9%), Hymenolepis nana (5%) and Enterobius vermicularis (2%), respectively. Mixed intestinal parasitic infections were seen in 12 (4.4%) studied children. Six (2.2%) double infections for G. lamblia and B. hominis were seen in these children while in four (1.5%) had G. lamblia and H. nana. Triple intestinal parasitic infections of G. lamblia, B. hominis and H. nana were observed in two (0.7%) of the children studied. In the other hand, about 14.8% of the studied children had a mild anaemia and 15.5 and 16.6% had iron deficiency and eosinophilia, respectively.