Population distribution of Trichuris trichiura in a community of Jamaican children

ABSTRACT

The trichuris trichiura worm burdens of 23 children in a Place-of-Safety in Kingston, Jamaica were assessed by stool collection for more than five days after treatment with mebendazole. This procedure was repeated after a seven-month period of natural reinfection. For both collections the maximum rate of worm expulsion was achieved on the fourth day after starting treatment. The worm populations were overdispersed and well described by the negative binomial probability model (k=0.29) in each case. For any one individual, the number of worms passed on the first expulsion was unrelated, absolutely or relatively, to the number passed on the second. These data suggest that knowledge of the time dependency of helminth expulsion is essential for the accurate determination of worm burdens by this method; populations of Trichuris are more highly aggregated than those of Ascaris and thus may be more susceptible to control by selective rather than random chemotherapy; and the inherent predisposition of hosts to infection may be of minor importance in determining the distribution of worms in the population-heavily infected hosts appear no more or less likely to acquire large worm burdens on subsequent exposures. (AU)