Dispel urban myths - You are not reinfecting yourselves!

100mg of Mebendazole is RARELY strong enough to get rid of the worms throughout the entire body in a single dose - despite what it says on the box!

You can get a stronger drug from your doctor (prescription only) called Albendazole - it's actually one of the ingredients in many animal worming tablets and Mebendazole is derived from it (so it works in a similar way - starving the little critters of glucose) - and the sad thing is your doctor probably hasn't even heard of it! - he keeps giving out the same old 100mg of Mebendazole (in the form of Ovex for example) which is simply just not strong enough to kill all the live worms in a single dose.

I have been reading lots of academic journals on threadworms to try and get through to the truth about them and get past all the urban myths! and I can tell you now THERE ARE NO KNOWN INCIDENTS OF THREADWORMS BECOMING RESISTANT TO MEBENDAZOLE! It's just that in laboratory testing 100mg Mebendazole works... and in practical trials it SEEMED to work because the worms went.

Maybe over time with good hygiene the numbers of worms can be whittled down and eradicated... but the problem is they often migrate...

Let me tell you my own experience... A couple of months ago I had a very bad infestation ...I had them up my nose, in my ears (I found them dead on the end of cotton buds), lungs (I coughed a live one up whilst running), and even experienced a very painful one in my eye at night (which laid eggs which I had to remove the next morning) - places really that I never knew they could go. I took Mebendazole instantly, and then again 14 days later, I blitzed my home as advised, washed bed sheets, damp dusted and cleaned everything on the first day of medication. All my symptoms went. Just over a week ago however, I felt I had them back again... slight itching around the anus and a wriggling sensation on and off at night. I bought a family pack of Ovex (4 x tablets of 100mg Mebendazole) I took one tablet, but on the 3rd night I was still getting wriggling sensations and the sticky substance around that area in the morning, eventually on the 4th night I got no more symptoms. On the 7th day I got a wriggling sensation right at the top of my nose, and my tummy didn't feel good either so I took another dose of Mebendazole, later that afternoon I sneezed out an adult dead female worm! (recognizable as longer than the males). Mebendazole is supposed to act all over the body yet this was an adult worm - if the Mebendazole had worked properly 7 days ago surely this would have come out long ago. Threadworms are very delicate and decompose very quickly, this worm had not decomposed and was very much still in tact; implying it had died recently - most likely within hours. This confirmed to me that the single dose of Mebendazole I'd had 7 nights before just hadn't been strong enough to kill this one.

I then read somewhere on this forum that one guy suggested taking 2x Mebendazole tablets every day for 3 days - and even suggested taking dog worming tablets as they were alot stronger. I now go along with this advice! I'm on my second day of taking 2x daily Mebendazole tablets (so have just taken my 4th ) and I have found I am getting streams of dead worms coming out; some I'm 'hocking up' from the lungs (Just FYI worms in the lungs is a very common but often unnoticed symptom after egg inhalation - the worms after hatching, climb to the top of the lungs and enter the throat to restart the cycle), others are coming out from my nose with mucus and yet since that 3rd day I've had no symptoms of worms 'down below'. In fact without taking the medication and seeing these dead worms, I'd have no idea I had them at all! Many of the websites say that people can have them without symptoms - How many people must have them who don't know they have them I dread to think!

I read an article published in a journal called GUT by a G.C.Cook, it was published in 1994 so might be considered old now... but it still contains some invaluable information.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1375686/?page=1

This should interest and hopefully calm the people frantically going round cleaning everywhere thinking they are reinfecting themselves...

He says that the eggs prefer a moist and cool (body temperature) environment; if the environment is warm and dry, most of the eggs will become infertile in 1-2 days: \"In warm dry conditions infectivity declines after 1-2 days\" (p1159). He also states \"Household detergents exert little impact on the viability of eggs; cleaning a bathroom using a damp cloth moistened with an anti-bacterial agent or bleach merely spreads viable eggs. Simple laundering of clothes and linen disinfects them; shaking disseminates infective eggs\" (p1161) - So using cleaning fluids won't penetrate the eggs but will just move them around but the good news is that just the movement of the washing machine will deactivate the eggs in your laundry.

If vibrations alone can 'disseminate infective eggs' then that dispels the idea that fruit could have infective eggs on it (as suggested might be the case somewhere on this forum) ..to be quite honest the idea that we could catch worms from any other human exchange is a very scary thought! - we would have to wash our post, our cash, credit cards, and tins and packets on the shelves at your local supermarket constantly... and it's just not true we can catch worms easily that way.

In my opinion you should just do a thorough clean on the first day of medication (or as soon as you realize you have an infestation) and then let things settle - don't clean anything more until after two weeks. Leave the eggs to become infertile over time (the max amount of which is 2 weeks as we keep being told by the websites - but according to this article - 2 days is more probable).

So long as you are following the advice of wearing the tight underwear at night, washing 'down there' in the morning and washing your hands and and nails (especially if you're scratching) thoroughly afterwards and before meals, then there is an extremely low chance of reinfection. The only danger left then is 'autoinfection' within the body.

The advice on most packets of Mebendazole state to take first a tablet, then another, 14 days later... but I'm not convinced...

Cook states that if the environment is right, the eggs will hatch and become worms within 6 hours. This is particularly pertinent for those eggs within the body as they will be in the most ideal environment. I also read on the NHS site:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Threadworms/Pages/Introduction.aspx

that \"After two weeks, the worms reach adult size and begin to reproduce, starting the cycle again.\" - so remind me again? ....why are we waiting 14 days before taking the next tablet??

If reinfection is as unlikely as it seems, then the horrible reality is that the medicine G.Ps are giving out are realistically not effective enough to get rid of all the worms in a single dose. The answer is to either take a stronger medicine (like Albendazole) with the doctor's consent, or take matters into your own hands with more frequent-than-recommended doses of Mebendazole (or take Animal worming tablets - not investigated this yet! ...but might make myself a human guinea pig soon!)

Think about it - if Mebendazole is ok for children of the age of 2, it makes sense that adults with much stronger digestive constitutions (and bigger and longer large intestines) should need something stronger. It would seem to me that recurring incidents of worms are to do with autoinfection within the body rather than reinfection from outside the body. The Mebendazole in its present recommended dosage is just not strong enough to do the job. Mebendazole may be safe - but in my opinion it's too safe for the worms aswell...

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