The symptoms can be linked to inflammation in the gut stimulated by feeding hookworms, such as nausea, abdominal pain and intermittent diarrhea, and to progressive anemia in prolonged disease: appetite, pica (or dirt-eating), obstinate constipation followed by diarrhea, palpitations, thready pulse, coldness of the skin, pallor of the mucous membranes, fatigue and weakness, shortness of breath and in cases running a fatal course, dysentery, hemorrhages and edema. The worms suck blood and damage the mucosa. However, the blood loss in the stools is not visibly apparent.