Intestinal Capillariasis

Excerpt

Despite intensive investigation in recent years, the cause of malabsorption syndromes in the tropics, which may occur in both endemic and epidemic form (1), largely remains obscure. The heavy intestinal infestation with various parasites so ubiquitous in tropical areas has usually been considered an incidental finding unrelated to the pathogenesis of malabsorption (2, 3). Whereas experimental nematode infestation in laboratory animals is associated with malabsorption and villous mucosal abnormalities (4, 5), in humans a reasonably convincing causal relationship between parasite infection and impairment of intestinal absorption has only been demonstrated in isolated patients with giardiasis (6) and strongyloidiasis (7).

Whalen