What other markers does the parasite test examine?

Our stool test provides a comprehensive analysis beyond just parasites. It offers insights into various markers crucial for gut health, including:

• Yeast, such as Candida Albicans and Geotrichum Species
• Beneficial bacteria
• Friendly gut flora
• Dysbiotic or bad bacteria
• Pathogens like campylobacter, shigella, e-coli, and salmonella
• Viruses, including Norovirus and Rotavirus
• Presence of white blood cells, which may indicate inflammation.

How can I order a Parasite testing kit?

Ordering our parasite testing kit is easy. Simply provide your name, address, and date of birth, and we’ll promptly dispatch a kit to you. You can either have it delivered or arrange for collection at our clinic. If you prefer, you can also reach out for a consultation first. Once you receive the kit, collect two separate stool samples on different days using the provided vials with preservative liquids. Ship your samples back to our laboratory. The turnaround time is typically 2 weeks. Remember to discontinue probiotics, antibiotics, or anti-fungals a week before the test for accurate results.

Who should conduct a parasite test?

This parasite test is suited to patients who have frequent diarrhoea with urgency or may have had exposure to contaminated food, lakes or untreated water. The Comprehensive Parasitology stool test as well as other Parasite tests that we offer will also help reveal candida and bacterial overgrowth. These are also common symptoms of IBS.

What are the Symptoms of a parasitic infection?

Many of the symptoms of parasitic infections are similar to those experienced by patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Parasites are a major cause of diarrhoea, even in developed countries such as the UK. Additionally bloating, nausea, pain, constipation, gas, fatigue and skin problems have been reported. Other symptoms that have been reported include dehydration, dysentery, malnutrition and weight loss.

Common signs of a parasite infection include:

• Diarrhoea
• Loose bowels
• Constipation
• Fatigue
• Skin rashes
• Cramps
• Gas
• Flatulence

These symptoms may come and go due to life cycles of parasites.

Parasites can latch onto the wall of your small intestine and cause iron and protein deficiencies. You may also feel extremely hungry and experience weight loss and fatigue, this may be due to iron deficiency. Intense anal itching at night has also been reported.

What are the Symptoms of Giardia?

Giardiasis is the most common parasitic infection of the human intestine worldwide. Giardia intestinalis is a parasite that can infect the small intestine. It causes acute, watery diarrhoea but some people do not have any symptoms and are asymptomatic. Many infections resolve without treatment however they can also cause chronic disease. Giardia infections can be linked to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and onset of food allergies. Stool testing is recommended as 280 million people annually do develop Giardia. (Source)

What damage do Parasites cause?

In addition to some of the unpleasant symptoms listed above, research suggests that parasites may also linked to food intolerances and allergies. This is because they may cause damage to the lining of the digestive tract. Reactive arthritis is classically seen following infection with enteric pathogens such as Yersinia sp., Salmonella sp., Campylobacter jejuni and Shigella sp., but inflammatory arthritis has also been described following enteric infections with other organisms such as Clostridium difficile, Brucella sp. and Giardia.

Parasites in the UK

We ran an audit and found that parasites proved to be a cause of people’s symptoms in 31% of the sufferers from IBS who have consulted us. They are especially likely to be a cause where the major symptoms are:

• Diarrhoea or endless loose bowel movements.
• Abdominal pain.
• A lot of gurgling or churning accompanied by the first two symptoms.

If the origin of the symptoms can be traced back to a bad stomach upset experienced on foreign travel, it increases the likelihood that parasites are the problem.

Even if the patient has been treated previously by means of a parasite test on the NHS, it is still very important to do a private parasite test that we use because their techniques are infinitely more sophisticated and will almost certainly find parasites in circumstances where an NHS test did not.

Dientamoeba fragilis and Blastocystis hominis are the commonest parasites that we find. The former should be relatively easy to eradicate; the latter can be extremely stubborn. If you have done a stool test in the past that was negative but you feel you match all the symptoms of a parasitic infection, or you had parasites in the past but are wondering if you have fully eradicated them, you may like to get in touch with us to further parasite testing because:

• We can arrange a sophisticated PCR parasite test for you
• If that test proves positive, you can finally get treatments that will relieve your symptoms.

A Case History

The problem for patients is that GP’s just do not seem to be aware that parasites can be a major cause of IBS. Nor, for that matter, even more surprisingly do gastroenterologists.

We had a patient in her twenties who has had extremely bad IBS for ten months – so bad in fact, that she has had to be off work for the whole of that time. She has been having diarrhoea up to fifteen times a day (ten times during the day and five during the night). She had been to her GP who suggested it was due to a virus! An exclamation mark is the kindest way I can think of commenting on that particular diagnosis.

Eventually she was sent for a colonoscopy, an endoscopy, a barium meal, and a sigmoidoscopy; these four tests together must have cost the NHS well over £1000 (or would have cost anyone doing them privately a total of about £2,500) and would have been followed by numerous visits to consultants.

What would we have done?

The moment we saw that she had given diarrhoea ten out of ten on our long questionnaire we would have immediately suspected parasites. When we audited 120 successive stool tests that we offer, we found that 31.6% of those patients had parasites. Yet GP’s and gastroenterologists seldom ever seem to consider them when they are investigating a patient with diarrhoea.

The Real Causes of IBS by Michael Franklin

If you would like to read the cover story article we wrote for Positive Health magazine, please see The Real Causes of IBS.

Quality Assurance

We use a number of different laboratories for parasite testing including Genova Diagnostics PCR and Doctor’s Data. The stool test utilizes culture growth testing; this is the international standard for clinical microbiology testing. The benefit of this type of testing is that it enables susceptibility testing to be performed. Therefore antifungals and anti-bacterials will be identified to eradicate pathogenic strains.

In addition to parasites, the test will identify species of yeast of which 65 are Candida species.

The test offered by Doctors Data use MALDI-TOF Technology. This technology shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and is used by NASA to search for life on Mars: in fact, Doctor’s Data also introduced MALDI-TOF to the functional medicine industry.

What are the most common type of parasites?

A parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets Its food from or at the expense of its host. There are three main

classes of parasites that can cause disease in humans: protozoa, helminths, and ectoparasites.

PROTOZOA

These include Balantidium coli, Blastocystis spp. Chilomastix mesnili, Cryptosporidium spp, Giardia.

They are defined as being single-celled organisms that are transmitted to humans through a fecal-oral route. The most common protozoa infections are Giardia, Cryptosporidium, and Entamoeba histolytica and these will certainly require treatment.

NEMATODES – ROUNDWORMS

These include hookworms and may be associated with diarrhoea unexplained anaemia and skin issues.

Ancylostoma and Necator are associated with iron deficiency anaemia.

Ascaris lumbricoide – Most patients are asymptomatic or have only mild abdominal discomfort, nausea, dyspepsia, or loss of appetite.

CESTODES – TAPE WORMS

These include Taenia spp.

Taenia saginata and Taenia solium- This tapeworm is found in people who eat raw meat.

TREMATODES – FLUKES

Clonorchis -Opisthorchis spp Fasciola spp.-Fasciolopsis buski, Dientamoeba fragili

References

Mayo Clinic – Giardia infection (giardiasis)

Scientific American – We Need to Talk about Intestinal Worms, Jan 29 2019

BMJ Case Reports – Aniskiasis: a growing cause of abdominal pain!

World J Gastrointestinal Pharmacology Ther. 2017 Nov 6; 8(4): 201–207. Published online 2017 Nov 6. doi: 10.4292/wjgpt.v8.i4.201

US National Library of Medicine – Protozoan parasites in irritable bowel syndrome: A case-control study