Fascioliasis is a parasitic disease that affects livestock such as sheep and cattle, but can also be dangerous for humans. The parasites enter the body through contaminated food and attack the liver and bile ducts. The disease can be contracted by eating contaminated water plants like watercress. Symptoms include severe gastrointestinal symptoms and liver damage. Treatment involves ingesting drugs like triclabendazole or bithionol.
Fascioliasis is a parasitic disease that mainly affects farm animals such as sheep and cattle. It can appear in many parts of the world but is generally most common in South America, parts of Asia, and Africa. People can also get Fascioliasis, and when they do, it’s potentially more dangerous than it is for most types of livestock. The parasites, also called liver flukes, mature into worms that enter the body through contaminated food and attack the liver and bile ducts.
Once an animal has been infected with fascioliasis, it will pass eggs in its feces. If this feces is released near water, there is a chance that the parasite will spread. They enter the bodies of some water snails, where they mature. Once they reach a certain age, they emerge from snails and attach themselves to underwater vegetation. The animals eat vegetation and enter the bodies of these animals, where they generally further mature into relatively large worms that live in the bile ducts.
People typically contract the disease more often in situations where livestock live in the same general areas where food is grown. Most humans get it from underwater food plants like watercress. Infection can potentially be avoided by cooking these plants thoroughly before eating them. In some areas, eating these plants raw is relatively common, and fascioliasis in humans is more common in those areas.
While the worms are maturing and making their way to a person’s bile ducts, they will generally experience vomiting and other severe gastrointestinal symptoms. Once the worms reach their full size, which can take three to four months, many of these symptoms will subside, but people may start to develop signs related to liver damage. Over time, fascioliasis can cause cirrhosis to develop, and symptoms are usually much worse in people than in animals. This is partly because the parasites are quite large and many animal species can handle large parasites much more easily than humans.
Treatment of fascioliasis is usually relatively easy and involves ingesting a drug called triclabendazole. In cases where that doesn’t work or isn’t available, some doctors may also prescribe a medication called bithionol. Both drugs are known to work quite well, but aren’t necessarily widely available. In many cases, the difficult part of treating fascioliasis is recognizing it. In many parts of the world, the infection is generally rare, so doctors may never consider fascioliasis a possibility, meaning they may not run the correct diagnostic tests to find out about it.
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