When you think of pinworms what do you think of? Do you think of small parasites ranging from ¼ inch to ½ an inch in size? How about intestinal worm infections? Or maybe you think of how the female pinworm lays thousands of eggs at a time? Well, if you have any of these thought you have hit the nail right on the head!
There are multiple ways to become infected with pinworms. You can swallow the pinworm eggs or you can breathe them in. One example of swallowing pinworm eggs could be if an infected child uses the bathroom, does not wash their hands, and then touches somebody’s food. Once the eggs are swallowed they travel into your intestines, hatch, then grow into adult pinworms within a few weeks.
When dealing with a pinworm infection …show more content…
If said infected child touches an item within a classroom, on a playground, etc. the eggs can survive for up to 3 weeks without a host (familydoctor.org). This is one reason pinworm infections are so common in school aged children.
“The medications used for the treatment of pinworm are either mebendazole, pyrantel pamoate, or albendazole” (cdc.gov). Only one does is given initially followed by a second dose two weeks later. Mebendazole, pyrantel pamonate, and albendazole does not reliably kill pinworm eggs, thus the second dose to prevent re-infection by the adult worms that hatched form eggs that were not kill from the first treatment (cdc.gov).
Now, knowing what you know about pinworms let me ask you a couple questions. Next time a child wants to take food from your plate, are you going to let them? If you know that someone has not had the second dose of medicine prescribed to kill pinworms, will you still shake their hand? No? Me either! Hopefully you learned something new and did not get to frightened by something you can never see