Disseminated strongyloidiasis occurs when patients with chronic strongyloidiasis become immunosuppressed. There is a distinction to be made between dissemination and hyperinfection. It is mainly a semantic distinction. There can be mild dissemination where the worm burden is relatively lower yet causes insidious symptoms, or extreme dissemination that the term hyperinfection is used to describe. Thus hyperinfection of varying levels of severe dissemination may present with abdominal pain, distension, shock, pulmonary and neurologic complications, sepsis, haemorrhage, malabsorption, and depending on the combination, degree, number, and severity of symptoms, is potentially fatal. The worms enter the bloodstream from the bowel wall, simultaneously allowing entry of bowel bacteria such as "Escherichia coli". This may cause symptoms such as sepsis (bloodstream infection), and the bacteria may spread to other organs where they may cause localized infection such as meningitis. Dissemination without hyperinfection may present to a lesser degree the above and many other symptoms.