Threadworms are small, thin, white worms between 2mm and 13mm long. They look like cotton threads and live in your bowel (gut). Strict hygiene measures (washing and cleaning) can help clear up a threadworm
Threadworms are small, thin, white worms between 2mm and 13mm long. They look like cotton threads and live in your bowel (gut). Strict hygiene measures (washing and cleaning) can help clear up a threadworm infection and reduce the likelihood of reinfection. To treat threadworms successfully, all household members must be treated, even if they don't have any symptoms.
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Also called pinworms
Key points about threadworms
- Having threadworms is common in childhood, but anyone of any age can be affected. Threadworms are not harmful, you may not notice you have them, but they can be itchy and annoying.
- Threadworms are small, thin, white worms between 2mm and 13mm long.
- They look like cotton threads and live in your bowel (gut).
- Strict hygiene measures (washing and cleaning) can help clear up a threadworm infection and reduce the likelihood of reinfection.
- To treat threadworms successfully, all household members must be treated, even if they don't have any symptoms.
Threadworms are spread from human to human. They are not carried by animals so you can't get them from your pets. Threadworms are spread easily within families/whānau, early childhood centres, schools and camps. If one person in your family/whānau has threadworms, others probably do too.
- Most people get threadworms by swallowing the worm's eggs.
- Threadworms leave your gut at night and lay eggs on the skin around your anus (bottom). The eggs can get onto your hands or under your fingernails through scratching the itchy area or because of poor handwashing after using the toilet/whare paku.
- You can pass the eggs on to an uninfected person, eg, through food/kai handling.
- Threadworm eggs can also get onto carpets, bed linen, towels, flannels and into household dust and, in this way, they are passed from person to person.
- It may be between 2 and 6 weeks after contact with a source of infection before the life-cycle is complete and eggs are laid in the newly infected person.
Threadworms are spread from human to human. They are host-specific, which means that animals do not infect humans, so you cannot get threadworms from your pets.
The most common sign of threadworms is itching around your anus (bottom), which is worse at night. This is because the worms are most active at night. In some instances, the worms can be seen in your stool (poo) or on toilet paper. Other signs include bedwetting, restless sleep, loss of appetite and irritability. Many people with a threadworm infection have no symptoms.
The most obvious way an infection is diagnosed is if the threadworms can be seen in your stool (poo) or on toilet paper. But, if this is not the case, your doctor may ask you to do a sticky tape test.
To do this you press some see-through tape on to the skin around your anus (bottom) first thing in the morning