Intestinal parasite infections at an institution for the handicapped in Korea

In August 1997, we carried out stool and cellotape anal swab examination on the handicapped people of an institution in Chorwon-gun, Kangwon-do, Korea. Formalinether sedimentation technique for 112 stool specimens revealed intestinal helminth eggs of Enterobius vermicularis, Trichuris trichiura, and protozoan cysts of Entamoeba coli, E. histolytica, Endolimax nana, Iodoamoeba btschlii, and Giardia lamblia, respectively. The infection rates of intestinal helminths and protozoan cysts are summarized in Table The overall infection rate was 35.7% (40 out of 112 subjects; 38.5% in males and 29.4% in females). Two or more different kinds of parasites were found in 17 positive stool samples. Fourteen specimens were positive for two kinds of parasites and three specimens were positive for three different parasites. Examination of the intestinal helminths and protozoan parasites revealed the highest positive rate as 25.0% for Entamoeba coli cysts, followed by 21.4% for Endolimax nana, 2.7% for Trichuris trichiura, 1.8% for Entamoeba histolytica, 1.8% for Iodoamoeba btschlii and 0.9% for both Enterobius vermicularis and Giardia lamblia. It was interesting to compare these results with a previous study done by In addition, Schupf et al. (1995) described that the prevalence of 179