Prevalence of Intestinal Parasitic Infections Among People in Sebha City, Libya

Abstract

Intestinal parasitic infection remains the public health problem in many areas in the world, especially in developing countries. The aim of the study was to assess the prevalence of intestinal parasitic infections in Sebha city. A total of 955 human stool samples were collected from January to December 2015. All samples were examined by microscopy methods in Al-Yamam and Sebha Central laboratories. Data were analyzed by SPSS software, and the statistical significant differences were measured at level p<0.05. The overall prevalence of intestinal parasite was 14.9% (142/955). The rate in females (17.2%, 76/443) was higher than in males (12.9%, 66/512), with no significant differences in the prevalence between them (p>0.05). About 99.3% (141/142) of infected samples were protozoa infections, and 0.7% was a helminth infection (1/142). Furthermore, 137 out of 142 (96.5%) of the infected samples were singly infected with  five species of parasites. Blastocystis hominis was the most common detected parasite with 8.3% of infection rate, followed by Entamoeba histolytica/Entamoeba dispar (4.4%), Giardia lamblia (1.4%),  Entamoeba coli (0.2%), and Enterobius vermicularis (0.1%). Whereas, five samples out of 142 (3.5%) had mixed infections. According to the age groups, the highest prevalence  of infection was found in the group aged 30-39 years (23.5%), and the lowest rate was in the age group 0-9 years (9.3%) with no significant relationship between the infection and ages (p>0.05). The results also showed that the highest infection rate was in February (22.8%), and the lowest rate was in June by 8.0%, with significant differences in the prevalence of infection between the year months (p<0.05).