Human fascioliasis infection: gender differences within school-age children from endemic areas of the Nile Delta, Egypt

Summary Several studies have reported a higher prevalence of infection for human fascioliasis among girls than among boys. To investigate this aspect further a sufficiently large data set was assembled comprising of 21 477 subjects with 932 positive cases. Subjects were primary school children covered by a control programme implemented by the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population in the Nile Delta from 1988 to 2002. Stool analyses were performed by the Kato–Katz thick smear technique for a quantitative diagnosis on the intensity of infection. Both prevalence and intensity of infection, indirectly measured as mean number of eggs per gram of faeces, were significantly higher among girls …