intestinal parasitic infections in chronic psychiatric patients in sina hospital shahre-kord, iran

background although the number of infectious diseases has sharply decreased in last few decades, parasitic diseases persist in developing countries. on the other hand, chronic psychiatric patients tend to have low self-control, poor personal hygiene, long term institutionalization and extremely low self-care should be monitored for parasitic diseases since psychosocial conditions can contribute to an affinity for infectious diseases. objectives the aim of study was to investigate intestinal parasites in chronic psychiatric patients. patients and methods in this cross-sectional study, all chronic psychiatric patients from sina hospital of shahre-kord university of medical sciences were recruited from april to november 2010. from each patient, 3 stool samples were collected every other day. samples were transferred to department of parasitology of faculty of medicine and were examined by wet direct smear, ziehl-neelsen and rayan blue trichrome stains. direct smear was examined microscopically by performing a standard direct smear using normal saline (0.85%) and iodine solution (lugol). stools were stained by ziehl-neelsen and rayan blue trichrome in order to investigate cryptosporidium and microsporidia respectively. results forty-seven patients (72%) were male and 18 (28%) were female.the minimum time of institution was 2 months and the longest period of incarceration was 152 months. the mean of hospitalization duration was 94.7 months. forty-four cases (68%) of participants were infected with intestinal parasites.the most frequent parasites were blastocystis hominis in 15 cases (23%) followed by microsporidia in 12 cases (18.5%), giardia lamblia in 7 cases (11%), isospora in 5 cases (8%) and cryptosporidium in 4 cases (6.2%), respectively. conclusions opportunistic protozoan parasites such as microsporidia, isospora and cryptosporidium should be considered as a potential pathogen in this setting and more health care should be given to this specific group.