Thiabendazole can have severe side effects and is unavailable in many countries. Major inroads are required to advance the development of successful medications and drug protocols for strongyloidiasis and other neglected tropical diseases.Contagiousness via textiles, unlike Enterobius vermicularis, is unfounded. As is, generally speaking, person to person contagiousness of asymptomatic and disseminated infection. It has rarely been transmitted through organ transplantation. Married Vietnam War veterans who were infected, yet never developed significant hyperinfection, lived for multiple decades with non-debilitating disseminated infection, without treatment, with wives who failed to ever contract infection. Contraction occurs overwhelmingly from skin exposure to any contaminated soil, contaminated potting soil, contaminated waters, lack of sanitation, or environmental factors as potential vectors. Nearly never to extraordinarily very rarely documented is transmission from person to person (besides from infected male homosexual sex), other than closeness of contact to the productive coughing of a very ill hyperinfected individual. It has been shown possible to occur in that situation, or potentially other similar scenarios, it is speculated via pulmonary secretions of a direly hyperinfected individual. In which case treatment for others may be indicated, if deemed necessary by proximity, symptoms, precautions, probable exposures to the same vectors, or through screening of serology and stool samples, until infection is eradicated.Before administering steroids at least somewhat screening for infection in even remotely potentially susceptible individuals in order to prevent escalating the infection is advised. As not doing so in certain cohorts can have extremely high mortality rates from inadvertently caused hyperinfection via immunosuppression of application of certain steroids.
Gastrointestinal system symptoms include abdominal pain and diarrhea and/or conversely constipation. Pulmonary symptoms (including Löfflers syndrome) can occur during pulmonary migration of the filariform larvae. Pulmonary infiltrate may be present through radiological investigation. Dermatologic manifestations include urticarial rashes in the buttocks and waist areas as well as larva currens. Eosinophilia is generally present. Strongyloidiasis can become chronic and then become completely asymptomatic. Disseminated disease
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.Dissemination can occur many decades after the initial infection and has been associated with high dose corticosteroids, organ transplant, any other instances and causes of immunosuppression, HIV, lepromatous leprosy, tertiary syphilis, aplastic anemia, malnutrition, advanced tuberculosis and radiation poisoning.