Question
A four-year-old child is experiencing nighttime grinding and morning abdominal pain. Is it possible that this is due to a worm infection? How should treatment be conducted?
Answer
Children with mild worm infections may not show any obvious symptoms. Severe cases may present with loss of appetite or pica, yellowish complexion, abdominal pain around the umbilicus, soft abdominal palpation, possibly detecting wriggling worms, or vomiting worms and passing worms in stools. Some children may have pale white spots on the skin, blue spots on the conjunctiva, granular white spots on the lower lip, thin greasy tongue coating, or peeling of the tongue tip. The cause of this condition is that the child has ingested worm eggs, primarily through hand-to-mouth contamination or unclean food and drink.