Pinworm eggs continue to be present (excreted) in the feces of an infected person for up to a week after the treatment, so precautions should be taken to prevent reinfection by washing hands thoroughly, especially under the nails.
Your doctor will give you some medicine to take right away and then again 2 weeks later to be sure the worms are gone. The doctor can also give you a cream to help stop the itching. Because it's easy to pass pinworms on to other people, the doctor may want the other people in your house to take medicine, too.
The medicine should start to work straight away but it may take several days to kill all the worms. It's important to take the medicine as a pharmacist or doctor tells you. Do not stop early if you have been told to take it for several days.
The worms will die after 6 weeks so provided you do not swallow any new eggs then no new worms will grow to replace them. Strict attention to hygiene should be sufficient. Piperazine (Pripsen) is a different medicine, and can be used in children under 2 years (but over 3 months).
You may be surprised to still see live worms in your dog's feces after deworming them, but this is normal. While this can be an unpleasant image, it's actually a good thing — it means the worms are no longer living inside your dog!
Once you have dewormed your puppy, you'll probably want to know how long your dog will continue to poop worms. Puppies will typically poop worms for 2-3 days after they have been dewormed.
If pinworm infection occurs again, the infected person should be retreated with the same two-dose treatment. The infected person's household contacts and caretakers also should be treated. If pinworm infection continues to occur, the source of the infection should be sought and treated.
Although medicine takes care of the worm infection, the itching may continue for about a week. So the doctor also might give your child a cream or other medicine to help stop the itching.
Consult a health care provider before treating a suspected case of pinworm. Treatment involves a two-dose course. The second dose should be given 2 weeks after the first.
Chlorine dioxide gas inactivates pinworm eggs in a non-invasive and non-corrosive manner.
Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach/abdominal cramps, headache, drowsiness, dizziness, trouble sleeping, or loss of appetite may occur. If any of these effects last or get worse, tell your doctor or pharmacist promptly.
Showering may help avoid possible re-contamination in bath water. Change underwear and bedding daily. This helps remove eggs.
If you are self-treating for pinworms, take the medication once only. Do not repeat the dose without talking with your doctor first. Depending on the type of worm infection you have, your doctor may direct you to take the medication only once or for several days.
The medication does not reliably kill pinworm eggs. Therefore, the second dose is to prevent re-infection by adult worms that hatch from any eggs not killed by the first treatment.
Most pinworm infections are mild and easily treated. Your doctor may prescribe a single chewable tablet of a medicine called mebendazole. A second tablet is taken about 3 weeks later if the infection isn't cured. Or your doctor may recommend another kind of medicine called pyrantel, which is taken as a single dose.
Reinfection does happen with pinworm
Reinfection can happen by touching surfaces that have already been contaminated with pinworm eggs by another person. Eggs are swallowed, usually after hand-to-mouth contact, and the pinworm infection begins again.
They take around 2 weeks to hatch. Children can get threadworms again after they've been treated for them if they get the eggs in their mouth. This is why it's important to encourage children to wash their hands regularly.
You'll likely need to give your doctor a stool sample for a few months to make sure all the worms are gone. It's harder to treat an infection caused by tapeworm cysts. In addition to the medicine that kills the tapeworm, you may need medicine to reduce inflammation or other symptoms, like seizures, that you're having.
If the treatment is working, the worms your puppy deposits in their stool should be dead. Dead worms are less white and more translucent than ones that are alive. Deworming treatments generally begin working about 12 hours after you give them the deworming treatment.
To test the effectiveness of your dewormer product, Ensley recommends that producers work with their veterinarian to perform fecal egg count reduction tests (FECRT). FECRTs assess the effectiveness of products being used and can help detect if producers have parasite resistance in their herd.
A deworming treatment takes only 24 hours!
The dog then no longer has any worms and no longer excretes any contagious worm eggs. He is thus free of worms – but can become infected again at any time by absorbing new worm eggs.
Pinworm eggs become infective within a few hours after being deposited on the skin around the anus and can survive on objects for 2 to 3 weeks.