Case 23-2012: A Man with Abdominal Pain and Weight Loss

摘要

Research reports on soil-transmitted helminths are not often seen in high-impact journals. Worms are not attractive -S, stercoralis least of all. Data on the prevalence of S. stercoralis in endemic regions are frequently nonexistent. In industrialized countries, however, the disseminated form of strongyloidiasis is often the subject of case reports such as that of Xavier et al. A PubMed search returns 143 case reports containing "strongyloid" (limited to the categories of "title/abstract," "humans," and "last 5 years"), most of them from industrialized and middle-income countries. A comparison of this number with the often quoted worldwide prevalence of 30 million to 100 million cases of the disease means that for every case report there are approximately 200,000 to 700,000 cases, most in developing countries.