Ch. 13 Anthelmintic Agents Flashcards
What are Anthelmintic Agents?
Are a type of medicine that kills helminths.
What is a helminth?
Worm that can cause disease by invading the human body
Flukes
Roundworms
Tapeworms
What is important to remember about anthelmintics?
Are selectively toxic to the parasite and not the host.
Anthelmintics drug list
Albendazole Ivermectin Mebendazole (Prototype) Praziquantel Pyrantel
Helminths that most commonly infect humans are:
Two types:
Nematodes (roundworms)
Platyhelminths (flatworms)
that cause intestine-invading worm infections and can be tissue-invading worms.
Name the nematodes (roundworms)
- Pinworms
- Whipworms
- Threadworms
- Ascaris
- Hookworms
Name the platyhelminths (flatworms)
Cestodes (tapeworms)
Flukes (schistosomes)
Helminths cause
They get in the GI tract and cause diarrhea
Tissue invading worm infections
- Trichinosis
- Filariasis
- Schistosomiasis
Trichinosis is what and caused by?
Disease (infection) caused by the roundworm (ingestion of the encysted larvae), the Trichinella spiralis in undercooked pork.
Once ingested what happens (Trichinosis)
The larvae are deposited in the intestinal mucusa (GI tract issues). Passes into the bloodstream and are carried throughout the body. They can penetrate skeletal muscle and cause inflammatory reaction in cardiac muscle and in the brain. Fatal pneumonia, heart failure, and encephalitis may occur.
Treatment for trichinosis
The best treatment is prevention. Because the larva are ingested by humans in undercooked pork instructing individuals about freezing pork meat, monitoring the food eaten by pigs, and properly cooking pork can be most beneficial.
What is Filariasis (a parasitic disease that)
Refers to infection of the blood and tissues of healthy individuals by warm embryos, which enter the body via insect bites. These threadlike embryos or Filare can overwhelm the lymphatic system and cause massive inflammatory reactions. This may lead to severe swelling of the hands, feet, legs, arms, scrotum, or breast – a condition called elephantiasis.
Schistosomiasis is a
Platyhelminthic Infection caused by a fluke that is carried by a snail therefore a parasitic flatworm that lives in freshwater in subtropical and tropical regions. Worms in rice fields. Enter body through cuts. The larva attached to the skin and quickly burrow into the bloodstream and lymphatics. Then they move into the lungs, and later to the liver, where they mature into adult worms that mate and migrate to the intestines and urinary bladder.
Signs and symptoms of Schistosomiasis
May include a pruritic rash, often called swimmers itch, where the larva attaches to the skin may experience fever, chills, headache chronic or severe infestation may lead to abdominal pain and diarrhea, as well as blockage of blood flow to areas of the liver, lungs, and CNS these blockages can lead to liver and spleen enlargement as well as signs of CNS and cardiac ischemia.
