Study of prevalence of intestinal parasites in mentally retarded in Ahvaz city, south Iran

Intestinal parasites are among problems of third world and developing countries that bring great deal of social and economic damages to society especially to closed communities which have no right attitude to hygiene and personal issues . Training centers for mentally retarded people are such communities that need more attention; hence we conducted a study to determine degree of contamination with intestinal parasites in centers for mentally retarded people in Ahvaz city. The results are as follows. Population consisted of 829 individuals; 526 male and 303 female. After tests, it turned out that 1.2%was contaminated with A.lumbercoides, T.trichiura 0.6% , H.nana 6% , E.histolitica 0.72% , G.lambelia 9.2% , E.coli 11.7 . Also we found that highest contamination with pathogenic parasites was in female. Statistical tests of Ӽ2 and t-Test showed that there was a meaningful relation between intestinal parasites and age and gender.