RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Survey on the intestinal pathogens prevalence in a population of preschool children attending to the urban day-nurseries. METHODS: Samples of faeces of 408 children and 31 adults, in their charge, were collected. The children were classified per sex, age and kind of day-nursery they were to; data on their physical condition and the faeces characteristics were obtained. RESULTS: Parasites were the enteropathogens, found with the greatest frequency (21% of children and 19% of adults), next were rotavirus (3% of the children's samples and only one case in adults). The cases of a double parasitization only were 0.74% of the total number of the children surveyed (3 children per each case). CONCLUSIONS: The highest prevalence of enteropathogens in children attending to the urban day-nurseries in our community belongs to the group of parasites; rotavirus are a much smaller group and bacterium are only isolated cases.
