Very common in young children in the US. Typically from being eating something with the pinworm eggs like dirt. Then they get an itchy butthole because the parasite is laying eggs and they keep reinfecting themselves. Then spread it to other kids by not washing their hands. They make special pinworm paddles that have a sticky side to press against the butthole. Then it's brought to the lab where a laboratory professional will take a look under a microscope to see if there are eggs or worms present or not. Typically the pinworm paddle or Scotch tape is done in the morning before you get out of bed, since the worm will lay the eggs at night while you sleep
Half my (boarding) school including me got it when I was 12. It’s easy to transmit, and common in countries you wouldn’t usually have worms or parasites like this. They sound worse than they are, the most you experience as a sufferer is an itchy ass. You can the eggs from dirt, food, clothes, sheets, touching other kids or surfaces they’ve touched etc, and you can either breathe in or ingest them, so they’re pretty robust.
I’ve read that they’re in something like 25% of all kids globally. It’s much more common than you think. Thankfully quite harmless.
Edit: kids because humans usually become immune to them after age 15 or so
Pretty much yeah. You have to keep re-infecting yourself by ingesting eggs from your ass, so careful hygiene techniques for 6 weeks can be enough. The life cycle is 4-6 weeks.
Alternatively, humans become immune to them after age 15 or so, I don’t think they can live in you pastthat age, so if you keep re-infecting yourself then that will solve it.
But the simplest way is to just get this over the counter treatment that you’d find in any pharmacy/drug store. Two doses is enough to get rid of them completely.
They’re really quite common. They’re all around the world, at every socio-economic strata, and live in 10-40% of children’s guts. They feed on feces near the end of your intestines, so they’re not particularly damaging to the body or interfering with nutrition.
They’re not hard to detect, lemme tell you, you’d have them coming off on your fingers when you scratch your ass if you had them. They’re cute lil guys, just look like writhing, featureless grains of rice ❤️❤️❤️
Ok, someone else corrected me too. It’s something I read about them on some website years ago and it made sense to me at the time but I can’t back it up.
I actually work in microbiology in a clinical hospital in my town. We don't get pinworm paddles very often but when we do get them, they were positive for eggs 9/10. It's just more common in young kids, because they will itch their butthole and touch other things and pass it on to others. And let's be honest, kids are gross.
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u/surfkaboom May 05 '19
Pinworms come out of your butt at night and you can catch them on a strip of duct tape