Correspondence

Abstract

You can find below the answer to the questions raised by Prof. Werner Apt B. However, first of all we would like to make clear here our constraint in relation to the impolite way that this professor has referred to our work and also to reviewers. The issues raised by him are very basic, but we'll try to answer them below satisfactorily.As concepts widely disseminated in scientific literature and adopted by WHO: Parasites are organisms that live in association with others, including withdrawing the means for their survival. Still, parasitism is an ecological relationship, developed between individuals of different species, in which there is, in addition to an intimate association, metabolic dependence of a different degree. Among the definitions of the degree of relatedness between species, these may be pathogenic or commensal, or have a positive relationship for both species, which is called mutualism.These concepts, which are adopted by WHO, are useful from the epidemiological point of view, because many commensal parasites are markers of environmental conditions and behavior, facilitating infection by others non commensal with the same routes of infection. Thus, unambiguously, we have described correctly and relevantly all terms, in the text, as in the tables, consequently both Entamoeba coli and Endolimax nana are enteroparasites.The presentation of commensal and not commensal parasites in the table that assesses symptoms was questioned. This question is not relevant, considering the population studied, which involved renal chronic failure patients in stage V on hemodialysis. In this context, in the manuscript we accentuate the disease-health process, considering the pathogenesis of diseases and immunity alterations that can lead to changes in the relationship between host and parasite, which makes the occurrence of disease by commensal possible. We emphasize further, that this argument was the main prerequisite for the study, described explicitly in the text, where we show our concern with behavior of intestinal parasites in a group so immunologically vulnerable.