What are the symptoms of liver fluke disease?

Parasites are something that affect people's health. In modern life, people have not been able to completely eliminate the harm of parasites to the body. It can be seen that the attachment ability of parasites is very strong, and many of the parasites are familiar to people. For example, liver fluke is a very common parasite, which is very harmful to people's health. Let's take a look at the symptoms of liver fluke disease?

Clinical manifestations

The disease generally has a slow onset, and only a few patients with severe infection within a short period of time will show acute clinical symptoms. People with mild infection often have no symptoms or only have a feeling of fullness in the upper abdomen, lack of appetite or mild abdominal pain after eating. The patient tires easily. Worm eggs can be detected in feces. Those with more severe infections usually have a slower onset and experience loss of appetite, upper abdominal fullness, mild diarrhea, and dull pain in the liver area. Patients may have hepatomegaly, especially in the left lobe, with tenderness and percussion pain. It may be accompanied by symptoms of neurasthenia such as dizziness, insomnia, fatigue, lack of energy, palpitations, and memory loss.

Some patients may develop obstructive jaundice or even biliary colic due to large numbers of adult worms blocking the common bile duct. Severe cases of chronic repeated infection develop into cirrhosis and portal hypertension, with symptoms such as weight loss, anemia, varicose veins of the abdominal wall, hepatosplenomegaly, ascites, and jaundice. Children with severe infection may suffer from malnutrition, growth disorders, and even dwarfism. Severe infections often present with acute onset. The incubation period is short, only 15 to 26 days. The patient suddenly developed chills and high fever reaching over 39°C, which was a remittent fever. Lack of appetite, aversion to greasy food, hepatomegaly with tenderness, mild jaundice, and a few patients have splenomegaly. After a few weeks, the acute symptoms disappear and the disease enters a chronic stage, characterized by fatigue, indigestion, hepatomegaly and tenderness, etc.

The symptoms of Clonorchiasis vary in severity and can generally be divided into three degrees.

① Mild

There are no subjective symptoms, and the eggs are only found during stool examination. Or there may be mild gastrointestinal symptoms, such as stomach tenderness after eating, soft stools, etc. About 35%.

② Moderate

The main symptoms are obvious gastrointestinal symptoms, such as lack of appetite, indigestion, distension and pain in the right upper abdomen, hepatomegaly, and mild edema. If bacterial infection occurs, cholangitis and cholecystitis may occur. About 55%.

③ Severe

There are obvious gastrointestinal symptoms, such as recurrent diarrhea or constipation, right upper abdominal pain, or splenomegaly, ascites, anemia, etc. It is more common in children, accounting for about 10%.