Amybiasis: treatment. Doctor's advice

The wonderful world in which we live, unfortunately, is inhabited by hundreds of creatures who only deal with things that cause us trouble, and sometimes even threaten our lives. One enemy from the army of such parasites is a faceless microscopic amoeba that causes a deadly disease of amebiasis. Treatment should begin immediately, and in the hearth must necessarily be disinfected. Amebiasis is very tricky, because parasites of amoebae, having got to us in the intestines, are able to spread to other organs with blood, where it is extremely difficult to detect them. Especially dangerous for life if amoeba get into the brain. That this did not happen, you need to rush to the doctor at the first signs of the disease. Let's take a closer look at the following questions: where does amebiasis come from, the symptoms and treatment of the disease, and most importantly, the preventive measures that must be taken in order not to interfere with it at all.

Causative agent amebiasis

First, we draw a portrait of the simplest unicellular creature, called amoeba dysenteric, or, scientifically, Entamoeba histolytica. From its relatives it is distinguished by more modest sizes of pseudomonas and calf as a whole. This amoeba lives exclusively parasitically, and only we, people can become its victims. The tiny parasite is so cunning that it managed to infect over 900 million people on Earth, awarding them with a disease such as amoebiasis. Treatment for ailment, started in a timely manner, has good predictions. If you do not rush to the doctor and do self-medication, you can pay with life. Dysenteric amoeba can exist in three completely different forms:

1. Cysts. They can be likened to eggs. They are round, very small, up to 12 microns, covered with a dense two-layered shell, are immature (within less than 4 cores) and mature (within exactly 4 cores). Cysts are responsible for the infection of healthy people. Formed in the patient's body, they come out with feces. In the external environment, they live about a month, and in the water - 3-4 months, and many disinstructions with them can not cope. Therefore, all this time, you can easily pick up amebiasis, the treatment of which we will consider below.

In the human stomach, cysts remain at rest. Their shells dissolve only in the small intestine. There, a mature quad, called a maternal one, is divided into 8 daughter single-nuclei.

2. The enlightened form. Amoeba-daughters feed on microbes inhabiting our intestines, grow intensively and gradually move from the small intestine to the thick. While they are conditionally harmless.

3. Tissue form. Having reached the large intestine, grown-up amoebae are introduced into its walls, where they begin to multiply rapidly. The bowel is ulcerated, and millions of new parasites are excreted into feces. When they thicken, young amoebas pull their pseudopods round, cover themselves with a double shell and turn into cysts.

The cycle is repeated.

Ways of infection

From the above, it is clear that only cysts participate in infection. Small and extremely tenacious, they are quickly dispersed from the stool in the district. Help fly flies, cockroaches, some other insects. Sewage wastes, which are known to not be subjected to special treatment, are used in the fields as an excellent fertilizer or simply poured into the environment. This also contributes to the expansion of the amoeba habitat. In animals, birds, fish they do not live, only in man.

Another convenient way for cysts to find a new victim is to hit them on household objects with the help of the dirty hands of those who have already amebiasis. Treatment of the sick can not begin immediately, but even if these people have taken timely measures, they are carriers of the infection, while cysts continue to be released from their intestines.

Thus, the pathways of infection with amebiasis are as follows:

- dirty hands;

- Drinking water from rivers, ponds, any open water bodies;

- the use of unwashed fruits and vegetables.

There are three more ways of infection:

- anal intercourse;

- use of one towel and wearing of general linen with a carrier of amoebiasis;

- transfer from a sick mother to a child when hygiene is not observed.

Intestinal amebiasis in adults, symptoms and treatment

The disease occurs more often where there is a warm climate, but in summer it is recorded in our latitudes. Europeans can pick up amoebiasis in traveling to exotic southern countries and from there to bring it home. If a person's body is strong enough, cysts and even luminal forms of amoeba live in the digestive tract relatively long without causing a disease. If immunity is weak, on the seventh day after infection, amoebiasis can begin to manifest itself. In adults, the symptoms and treatment depend on where the amoeba settled in the body. If it is the intestine, intestinal amoebiasis is diagnosed. Amoebae occupy almost all of its departments - the cecum, ascending, colonic, sigmoid and direct. In the walls of the intestine dozens of erosions and ulcers of varying depth and diameter (up to 3 cm) are formed, sometimes reaching the perforation and peritonitis. In any case, the intestinal mucosa becomes inflamed, pus accumulates in ulcers.

Symptoms:

- temperature;

- lethargy, weakness;

- pain in the intestine;

- fever;

- loose stools.

Important: severe diarrhea in the first days of the disease is observed only in 10% of infected.

In the future, all the symptoms are added:

- Frequent stools (liquid, with pus and blood);

- signs of dehydration (dry lips, tongue, skin, weak turgor);

- signs of intoxication (headache, bouts of vomiting, nausea);

- exhaustion.

Symptoms of extraintestinal amebiasis of the liver

Parasites that get into the bloodstream are spread over other organs. Most often the liver suffers, but they are also suitable for the lungs, the brain, pericardium, cornea, spleen and skin. If this happens, the extra-intestinal amebiasis is diagnosed, the treatment of which depends on the localization of parasites. Sometimes there are amoebas in other organs and after they are eliminated in the intestine.

The liver, infected with amoebiasis, functions quite well, and in the blood tests the presence of parasites is not displayed. An exception is the indicator ALPL - alkaline phosphatase. With hepatic amoebiasis, its values are higher than 140 IU / l.

A purulent bag (abscess) is formed in the liver, which, if the means for treating amoebiasis are incorrectly selected, can be perforated. Then its contents pour into the abdominal cavity, there is internal bleeding, sepsis may occur.

Symptoms of having amoebas in the liver:

- aching pain in the side to the right, often extending under the shoulder blade and / or in the shoulder;

- intensity of pain in the right hypochondrium decreases when the patient turns to the left side;

- hepatomegaly (an increase in the boundaries of the liver);

- soreness on palpation;

- nausea;

- diarrhea;

- temperature;

Sweating, chills;

- loss of appetite and, as a consequence, weight.

Symptoms of lung amebiasis

This complication is possible for two reasons:

- amoebae with blood have got to lungs from an intestine;

- drugs for the treatment of amebiasis in the liver are picked up incorrectly, as a result of which there was a breakthrough in the abscess in the liver and pus was discharged into the cavity of the pleura.

When skidding parasites in the lungs with blood should alert the symptoms:

- persistent cough with phlegm, in which there are impurities of blood;

- Shortness of breath;

- temperature;

- soreness of the chest.

Without proper treatment, a purulent abscess also forms in the lungs. In this case, the patient is observed:

- fever;

- high soreness in the abscess;

- signs of heart failure.

When autopsy suppuration appears cough with sputum chocolate color, glossitis, pharyngitis.

Diagnosis of pulmonary amebiasis includes a blood test, an X-ray, a study of feces for the detection of cysts, examination of sputum and pleural fluid, serological tests.

Amoebiasis of other organs

Rarely, but still there is skin amoebiasis. The disease is characterized by ulcers, most often observed in the abdomen, perineum and buttocks. Usually the wounds are deep, dark at the edges, have an unpleasant odor.

Brain amebiasis is one of the most painful complications of the disease. It is characterized by strong, non-stopable headaches, seizures, a sensitivity disorder, paralysis. An abscess or swelling of the brain tissue can develop. Focal symptoms are different, depending on the localization of the formation of an abscess in the brain regions and coincide with the corresponding neurological disorders. Treatment of amoebiasis in adults and children that originated outside the intestinal zone is carried out with the mandatory prescription of antibiotics in tandem and tissue amoebicides (Metronidazole, Dehydroemitin, Hingamin). With no brain amebiasis, nootropic drugs are added to the complex of medications.

With amebiasis of the liver and skin, in addition to basic medicines, prescribe Diiodochin, Intestopan, Meksaform.

If chemotherapy does not give the expected result and if there are abscesses, surgical intervention is performed.

Chronic amoebiasis

Dysentery amoeba can live in our intestines for years, that is, the acute form of the disease becomes chronic. This happens when the treatment of amoebiasis in adults and toddlers was carried out incorrectly, not completely or not at all. Patients, suffering a month or more, begin to experience the desired relief. The pains in the abdomen pass, diarrhea also, the general well-being improves. This stage is called remission, which pleases about a month, and sometimes up to three to four months. The person begins to feel that the ailment has receded. But after remission there are always new exacerbations, during which everything is repeated again. This form of chronic amoebiasis is called recurrent.

There is a second form called continuous. With it, the characteristic signs of amebiasis are then amplified, then diminished, but never completely stopped.

Symptoms of chronic amoebiasis:

- decreased appetite leading to weight loss, anemia;

- decrease in working capacity, vitality;

- Fatigue;

- asthenic syndrome;

- avitaminosis;

- hepatomegaly;

- tachycardia;

- in the intestine can be formed polyps, narrowing of the intestine, perforation of its walls, bleeding.

Diagnostics

Before starting treatment of intestinal amebiasis, differentiation of pathogenic flora, revealed in the patient's stool, is carried out. There may be not only dysentery amoeba, but also intestinal amoeba (Entamoeba coli), dwarf amoeba (Endolimax nana) or others, and to confirm the diagnosis of "amoebiasis", it is necessary to find exactly dysentery amoebae and it is in the tissue form. If in the feces only their cysts or luminal forms are diagnosed - the carrier of amoebiasis. Differentiation is carried out by PCR. In addition to the analysis of stool in the case of intestinal amebiasis, a colonoscopy is performed.

Treatment

All those who have confirmed the diagnosis of "amebiasis", treatment with antibiotics and amoebicides is carried out in the hospital. Appointed "Metronidazole", "Ornidazole", "Tinidazole" or other similar drugs, depressing the dysentery amoeba. In the complex prescribe drugs of the group of tetracyclines, which are active to this parasite.

At the end of the main course, an additional one is prescribed, which includes amoebicides that act on the luminal forms. These are "Klefamid", "Etofamid", "Paromomycin". The same drugs are attributed to people who have found in their stool only cysts and luminal forms of amoeba.

ethnoscience

Since without correct therapy can lead to the death of amoebiasis, treatment of folk remedies of this ailment is possible only as an addition to the main course. In general, the help of healers is reduced to cessation in patients with bloody diarrhea. There are dozens of recipes in the people helping with this problem. Some of them:

- Film from chicken stomachs. It is separated, thoroughly washed, dried, chopped and eaten 2 or 3 times a day.

- Dry tea making. Incomplete teaspoonfully chew and swallow, washed down with water.

- Oak bark. (Medication for adults). A teaspoon of dry crushed bark needs to be poured into 400 ml of cold but boiled water and infused for 8 hours. Ready to drink a day.

- Widely used blueberries, bird cherry, sea-buckthorn, hawthorn, mountain ash. The recipe is identical for all plants - 100 grams of dried berries pour 400 ml of boiling water, insist and take 100 ml per day. Only berries of bird cherry need to take only 10 grams.

"Garlic." It is cleaned, crushed, measured 40 grams and poured into half a glass of vodka, let it brew. Each time half an hour before the start of the meal take 15 drops of funds.

Amoebiasis in children: symptoms and treatment

This disease is almost not observed in infants. But the kids from a year to three years sick them more often, because they learn to walk, they want to explore the world around and do it mostly with their hands. And children over the age of three already understand that you can not pull everything into your mouth. Parents should take these features into account and maximally protect their child from infection.

Symptoms of amoebiasis in toddlers:

- diarrhea (the main and most important sign);

- capriciousness;

- refusal to eat;

- pain in the tummy;

- temperature (may rise slightly or to high marks).

In children, diarrhea is not very frequent at first, about 6-7 times a day, feces are liquefied, they may contain mucus. In the future, urges increase to 20 or more times, the fecal masses are markedly liquefied, with blood and mucus. The child at this stage becomes sluggish, refuses to play, complains of pain in the abdomen, nausea.

Extraintestinal amoebiasis in infants is infrequent. Their symptoms are the same as in adults. The acute form of the disease without proper therapy after three or four weeks passes into a chronic.

Diagnosis is based on anamnesis and stool analysis (mucus, erythrocytes, cysts, eosinophils are found in it). This analysis is performed several times to eliminate the error. In some cases, the child is given a serological test for antibodies, but he begins to "work" only after 2 weeks from the appearance of the first symptoms. The analysis of blood in acute amoebiasis results does not give, but in chronic there is an increase in ESR and eosinophils, a decrease in hemoglobin.

Treatment of amebiasis in children is carried out in a hospital. The drugs Osarsol, Delagil, antibiotics of the tetracycline group, Flagil, Trichopol, Fasizhin, Meratin, vitamins, Bififor, Symbiet are used. Particular attention is paid to the restoration of the lost body fluid, for which the child is given plenty of drink (when vomiting on the spoon, but very often). To avoid loss of salt, it is advisable to make a solution for drinking: 1 liter of water, plus 1 tsp. Without a slide of salt and soda, plus 2 tbsp. L. Sugar, mix everything until the components dissolve, heat to a temperature of + 37 ° C before use.

Prevention

Like any intestinal infection, amoebiasis can be prevented, if hygiene is observed, wash hands before eating and after going to the toilet, wash all products bought or torn up on personal plots of land, boil water taken from open water bodies. In addition, it is necessary to destroy peddlers of cysts, cockroaches.

At the first signs of amebiasis, you need to hurry to the doctor, and not engage in self-healing, even with the help of the most proven "experienced" recipes. This will prevent the infection of relatives and friends with amoebiasis.