Quantifying the risk of zoonotic geohelminth infections for rural household inhabitants in Central Poland

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the risk of soil transmitted zoonotic helminth infections for families with young children, inhabitants of villages in the Mazowieckie Province of Central Poland. Epidemiological survey was conducted at 33 randomly selected households with 2-3 children present. Examination of soil samples from yards surrounding the houses for the presence of geohelminth eggs was conducted, the households were inspected, and family members interviewed using a designed questionnaire. Among 55 localities examined, i.e. 33 backyards, 10 vegetable gardens and 12 sandpits, contamination was found in 2 backyards (6.1%) and 1 sandpit (8.3%) at 3 households (9.1%). Of the total 550 examined soil samples, 4 (0.7%) were found to contain Trichuris and Toxocara eggs, with an average density of 1.5 and 2.0 eggs per sample. The study showed a low level of soil contamination, which was the result of inhabitants care about the sanitation of their domiciles. However, the results of the questionnaire survey demonstrated the need to warn rural residents about the risk factors for zoonotic helmints infections. In particular, parents should be advised how to minimize the threat of parasitic diseases for children in the rural environment. The presented study showed that promotional campaigns implemented in recent years on the prevention of parasitic zoonoses have had little effect to increase the awareness of the rural community. The present results confirmed that Toxocara is the most common zoonotic agent among geohelminths in the rural environment.

Parasitological contamination of arable soil in selected regions of Poland – preliminary study

“…Most of the available data from the last 20-30 years come from studies carried out in soils from inhabited areas -cities and villages [20,[27][28][29][30], including places used as children's play areas, e.g. sandboxes and city parks [16,17,[32][33][34][35][36], as well as from school premises (including rooms used as classrooms) [37,38]. Subsequently, these include, for example, soil collected from farm animal farms and their immediate vicinity [24,39,40], from gardens and fields fertilized with sewage, and from where plants intended for direct consumption (vegetables and fruits) are cultivated [9,24,41].…”

Saprophytic Filamentous Fungi against Helminths Affecting Captive Wild Animals

“…With all of the above in mind, together with the high resistance presented by the eggs of some helminths and even infective larvae under certain conditions, it appears necessary to adopt an alternative approach for the control of these soil-transmitted parasites [16,23,28,29].…”