Comment by dpark
1 day ago
Are there areas in the developed world where this is common? I’ve never heard of anyone regularly taking anti parasitic medication because their kids kept bringing home parasites from daycare. I had a friend whose son was prescribed medicine for pinworms once when he was fairly young (mostly as a precaution).
Remember that
So it is not just that percentage has had it at any point in their life, it is that percentage that has it at any time.
And yes, kids. Pinworm is literally called 'children worm' here.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinworm_(parasite)#burkhart200...
That’s interesting, thanks. Looks like it’s 11%-ish in the US which is lower than the other cited countries but still more common than I would have guessed.
If you’re a suburban kid, GenX or later you may have missed the peaks. In the 60s, it was more like 35-45% of kids.
Things like rules for handwashing and standards for things like residential plumbing improved hygiene and reduced ringworms. Many urban and rural households didn’t have things we take for granted like hot water!
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https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/threadworm/background-informa...
NICE estimate 20-30% of kids 4-11 have an infestation. I have three kids in this bracket and yeh this tracks
Huh. Have the numbers gone up since the 80s? Worms are not something I ever heard about as a child, teen, or twenty-something.
That said, I also had a kid in the 00s and my friends have kids now, and nobody has mentioned getting worms.
Asymptomatic infestation is very common… no one likes to talk about pinworms but it’s pretty likely any kids you meet have it.
I had worms as a kid once in the nineties, I ate some cookies I found buried in the sand on the playground.
It’s not super common (if you live in Europe) but it happens.
Meanwhile my friends who grew up in a tropical country they had to take anti-worm meds regularly.
It depends a lot on your circumstances
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Yes, it’s fairly common infection in children. I mean they don’t wash carefully their hands, they put everything in their mouth - it would be a real surprise if they would not catch it.
I believe I know an immune-compromised adult who was taking anti-parasitics for more than two years due to workplace (care context) reinfections. I say “believe” because these are two things people talk about in coded, careful ways. It might be a little more common than polite conversation ever really reveals.
For example if you know anyone who raised early concerns about antivaxxers causing short supply of ivermectin formulations for human use during the pandemic. More or less anyone who knew what ivermectin was at that point in time was either a farmer, a vetinarian, a doctor… or a patient with a condition.