How do you get threadworms? You or your child can get threadworms by accidently swallowing worm eggs found on contaminated surfaces. This can happen by scratching the anal region and then touching your mouth or food.
Causes of threadworms
Scratching the anus or vagina, or wiping them after going to the toilet, can cause the eggs to stick to your fingertips or under your fingernails. If you don't wash your hands, the eggs can be transferred to your mouth or on to food or objects, such as toys and kitchen utensils.
Threadworm is spread when children scratch their bottom, causing the eggs to collect under the fingernails. The child then carries the worm eggs back to their mouth with their hands. The eggs can also be spread indirectly, in food, dust, or other items. The eggs can survive up to two weeks outside the body.
Threadworms are common but are not usually serious. Threadworms infect the gut and lay eggs around your anus, which causes itch. Treatment usually includes medication plus hygiene measures. Medication kills the worms but not their eggs, which can survive for two weeks.
Threadworms do not go away by themselves, and people do not build up immunity to them, so they must be treated in order to eradicate them totally from the body.
A pinworm infection happens when the eggs of a pinworm enter a person's intestine. As the females mature, they move to the anal area. At night, they leave the anus and lay eggs in the area around it. Some people have no symptoms, but it can cause severe itching.
Also, threadworm eggs can survive for up to 2 weeks outside the body (on bedding, clothes, etc).
Threadworm treatment is fairly straightforward. Your doctor will usually prescribe a medication called mebendazole - available in liquid or tablet form - and a single dose should clear the problem.
Contaminated clothing and bedding should be washed in hot water. Other methods of preventing infection include regularly washing hands and scrubbing finger nails. A shower with a good bum wash is also a good idea, especially in the morning.
How do you get threadworms? You or your child can get threadworms by accidently swallowing worm eggs found on contaminated surfaces. This can happen by scratching the anal region and then touching your mouth or food.
Threadworm eggs are usually passed directly from person to person, but they can live on toys and other objects and surfaces for up to 2 weeks. If you touch your mouth with your hands after touching a contaminated toy or other object, you can become infected. Humans cannot catch threadworms from animals.
Poor hygiene is the most common reason for the spread of worms. Hand washing is the most effective way of reducing the risk of developing worms.
Without treatment, threadworm may give rise to vaginitis (inflammation of the vagina) in girls and women. You can often see threadworms, a 1cm thread-like worm, wriggling in your child's stools or their bottom.
Coconut is the most effective home remedy to treat intestinal worms. Consume a tbsp of crushed coconut in your breakfast. After 3 hours, drink about one glass of lukewarm milk mixed with 2 tbsps of castor oil. Drink this for a week to get rid of all types of intestinal worms.
Treatment to get rid of worms
If you have worms, a GP will prescribe medicine to kill them. You take this for 1 to 3 days. The people you live with may also need to be treated. Any worms in your gut will eventually pass out in your poo.
Eat more raw garlic, pumpkin seeds, pomegranates, beets, and carrots, all of which have been used traditionally to kill parasites. In one study, researchers found that a mixture of honey and papaya seeds cleared stools of parasites in 23 out of 30 subjects. Drink a lot of water to help flush out your system.
To remove threadworm eggs and prevent re-infection: Change and wash underwear, nightwear and, if possible bed linen and towels, every day for a few days. A hot water wash, or the heat of an iron, will kill the eggs.
People become infected, usually unknowingly, by swallowing (ingesting) infective pinworm eggs that are on fingers, under fingernails, or on clothing, bedding, and other contaminated objects and surfaces.
Bed bug egg shells appear as white, husk-like specks, according to the NHS. They can sometimes be mottled and are produced when the bugs shed their skin as they grow.
Distaste aside, threadworms do no harm - except, as my GP wryly observed, to the sufferer's self-esteem. The worms are white and about a centimetre long by 0.5mm in diameter. They most often make their presence felt by anal itching but can also be seen in the faeces.
COMBANTRIN® is a highly effective treatment to rid the body of threadworm infections – just one dosage of COMBANTRIN® or COMBANTRIN®-1 kills adult worms within the body, either through paralysis with COMBANTRIN® or by preventing them from absorbing the glucose they need to survive – with COMBANTRIN®-1.
Medication kills the worms, but not their eggs, which can survive for two weeks. Therefore, you also need strict hygiene measures for two weeks after taking medication to prevent you from swallowing eggs which may cause a new infection.