Signs and symptoms of parasitic diseases

This article reviewed the parasitic signs and symptoms most likely to be seen in the office setting. Particular attention has been given to the endemic parasites. The physician will be called upon increasingly to recognize the often subtle and seemingly unrelated symptom complex. Nowhere else in the animal kingdom has the need for species survival taken a more complex and imaginative route, and it will be the primary care physician who will have first chance at the diagnosis and treatment. The long history of successful parasitic adaptations and the variety of body sites infected in man provide a challenging context for the office-based physician trying to make a clinical diagnosis.