Guardia is a cosmopolitan parasite that occurs in the small intestine of human, causing giardiasis; a persisting diarrhoea in children from both industrial and nonindustrial nation of the world.
Image source: https://www.bundoo.com/articles/giardia-intestinalis-infections-in-children/
In USA alone, over 200 million cases are reported annually, in Africa, Asia, and Latin American, prevalence is over 200 million.
Giardiasis also affect animals such as dogs, cats, calves and wild mammals such as beavers.
Life Cycle
Giardia intestinalis exist in two forms; an active form called trophozoites and an inactive form called a cyst.
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The cyst form are responsible for causing giardiasis. The cyst are hardy and can survive for months in cold atmosphere especially in cold water.
Infection of giardiasis begins when a viable cyst in contaminated water is ingested by a host, the cyst migrate to the small intestine where it encyst to produce two trophozoites each with six flagella.
The trophozoites multiply by binary fission to produce more individuals and they also attach the epithelium wall with a ventral sucking disk while some live freely in the intestinal lumen.
Image source: https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/giardia/pathogen.html
The trophozoites migrates the large intestine,colon where it begin to encyst. During this period, the trophozoites become ovoid in shape, suckers and flagella degenerate and each nucleus divides to produce four nuclei.
A resistor hyalin wall is form to envelope the resulting four nuclei cyst before they are passed out from the host feces.
Who Is At Risk For Giardiasis?
People who suffer from giardiasis are:
people with poor personal hygiene.
inadequate sanitation.
people who make use of contaminated feces ( night soil) of farm manure as fertilizer for crop cultivation.
people who make use of contaminated waste water for irrigation.
who make use of contaminated water for ice making to chill drinks and some common factors that increases transmission.
people who make use for contaminated water to wash vegetables (salad).
What Signs And Symptoms Does Giardiasis Cause?
Bloating,
Bad breathing and farts,
Dehydration and weight loss,
Fatique and loss of appetite,
Image source: https://blog.pkids.org/tag/giardia-lamblia/
This occur after about 1-10 weeks of incubation period which will commence with dull epigastric pain, nausea and vomiting.
Subsequent, patient produces watery stool with large volume of mucus but no blood.
In severe cases, their is mild inflammatory change in the mucosa(gut) such that secretions and absorption becomes impeded as excess fats are passed out in stool. This condition is known as steatorrhea
How Is It Diagnosed?
It can be diagnose by taking small sample of your stool to the laboratory for antigen test. This test will identify the percentage of giardiasis present in the stool.
It can also be examined with the use of microscope to check the present of trophozoites and cyst present in the stool.
Treatment Of Giardiasis
Drugs such as metronidazole, furazolidone, mebendazole are effectively used for treating this infection but they are not approved by the FDA in U.S but instead they approve tinidazole which is not common like other drugs.
Prevention Of Giardiasis
Drink treated water.
Do not drink from fresh water without boiling or filtering the water
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Always wash hands before eating and after changing diapers.
For those of you that love oral or anal sex such also avoid it.
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