Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0017536 (giardiasis)
 1,714 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

In the period November 1, 1985 to January 31, 1986, 703 cases of giardiasis were reported in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (population 50,265). The community obtained its water from two main reservoirs (A and B) and an auxiliary reservoir (C). Potable water was chlorinated but not filtered. The incidence of illness peaked approximately two weeks after the city began obtaining a major portion of its water from reservoir C, which had not been used for three years. The attack rate of giardiasis for residents of areas supplied by reservoir C was 14.3/1000, compared with 7.0/1000 in areas that received no water from reservoir C. A case-control study showed that persons with giardiasis were more likely to be older and to have drunk more municipal water than household controls. A community telephone survey indicated that over 3,800 people could have had diarrhea that might have been caused by Giardia, and 95 per cent of households were either using alternate sources of drinking water or boiling municipal water. Environmental studies identified Giardia cysts in the water of reservoir C. Cysts were also detected in the two other reservoirs supplying the city, but at lower concentrations. This investigation highlights the risk of giardiasis associated with unfiltered surface water systems.
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PMID:Epidemic giardiasis caused by a contaminated public water supply. 327 34

Empirical antimicrobial therapy is indicated in patients with diarrhoea who have high fever and systemic toxicity, dysenteric disease, or travellers' diarrhoea. Antimicrobials are essential for those with severe shigellosis and amoebiasis. They are useful or possibly useful for other forms of diarrhoeal disease including amoebiasis (milder forms), campylobacteriosis, cholera, giardiasis, shigellosis, and diarrhoea due to a variety of other laboratory-defined bacterial enteropathogens. Furazolidone is useful in infantile giardiasis and mildly effective in other forms of bacterial diarrhoea. Trimethoprim/sulphamethoxazole is effective against Shigella spp. in ost parts of the world. Erythromycin is considered the treatment of choice for campylobacteriosis. For adults, the quinolone antimicrobials represent the most useful class of drugs for bacterial enteropathogens. Several dilemmas currently exist in the area. They include the lack of drugs for the therapy of trimethoprim-resistant shigellosis in children, overuse of antimicrobials in the developing world, and the potential for post-treatment prolongation of intestinal excretion of non-typhoid salmonellae. Antimicrobial chemoprophylaxis can be used in the rare person from an industrialized area during brief travels to a tropical region who has a serious underlying medical problem, cannot exercise care in what is eaten and drunk, and will have the purpose of the trip put at jeopardy should any illness develop (even that rendered short-term by effective therapy). For most people, therapy of illness is preferred to prophylaxis.
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PMID:Diarrhoeal disease: current concepts and future challenges. Antimicrobial therapy and prophylaxis. 810 47