Reader Comments

Post a new comment on this article

surprising

Posted by mnacher on 16 Mar 2010 at 23:51 GMT

Prevalence of each helminth species did not differ significantly depending on gender, age, or year of study. A mean number of 1526 eggs per gramme of stools (range: 40–5800) was determined by the concentration technique employed, and only 10% of the children with helminth infections had less than 80 eggs per g of stools, indicating moderate to high helminthic loads in this cohort of children.
http://plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0009309#article1.body1.sec3.sec1.p6

This pooling of eggs of different worms is odd : Ascaris lays many more eggs than hookworm or Trichuris. Therefore, a light or medium Ascaris infection might lead to a number of eggs that could be considered high for hookworm. Pooling all worms together and looking at the average number of eggs is highly questionable. The variable that would influence this figure is the proportion of patients with Ascaris.

No competing interests declared.