Elephant foot disease or lymphatic filariasis is caused by the Filariodide worm that infects lymph nodes. This worm enters the human body with mosquitoes.
Elephant foot disease is commonly found in tropical regions. Overall there are 1.23 billion people worldwide who are at risk of being infected with this disease.
How Can Elephant Leg Disease Spread?
As a tropical country, Indonesia is a comfortable place for mosquitoes to breed. Therefore, it is only natural that more than one hundred million people are at risk of being infected with this disease.
When a mosquito sucks on someone's blood containing filarial worms, the worm will also infect mosquitoes. Furthermore, mosquitoes that have been infected will spread filaria worms when biting others. The filarial worm larvae will then stay in the lymph vessels.
It is in the lymph vessels that filarial worm larvae will grow up and multiply. Adult worms themselves can live up to 7 years in human lymph vessels. They will spread millions of worms into blood vessels so that when bitten, mosquitoes can transmit them to others.
What are the symptoms of elephantiasis?
In fact, someone who is infected with this worm cannot be immediately ascertained because this disease has several phases, namely without symptoms, acute, and chronic.
Asymptomatic phase
When someone is infected with a filarial worm, he or she will not immediately show certain symptoms. However, in this phase actually there has been damage to the lymph flow system and spleen, along with changes in the immune system.
Acute phase
It is characterized by inflammation of the skin, lymph nodes, and lymph vessels, which usually accompany chronic swollen lymph nodes, and elephantiasis. This is caused by the immune system's response to parasites. Symptoms that can occur in the acute phase include fever, swollen lymph nodes, and swelling in the legs and scrotum.
Chronic phase
Upon entering the chronic phase, swollen lymph tissue and thickening of the skin on the legs and testicles can occur. In women, swelling can occur in the breasts and genital organs.
How To Prevent And Treat Elephantiasis
Because it involves mosquitoes as intermediaries, the way to prevent elephantiasis is to avoid mosquito bites as much as possible, especially in the morning and evening. The trick is to clean the environment so that mosquitoes do not nest, sleep using mosquito nets, wear long clothes while doing activities outside the home, and apply mosquito repellent on the skin that is not covered with clothes.
Taking regular worm medicine every year can kill worm larvae in the bloodstream. If someone has suffered from elephantiasis, he or she will be advised to take antiparasitic drugs, such as albendazole and ivermectin, or with diethylcarbamazine citrate. These drugs are effective for cleansing the blood of microfilariae, while preventing the spread to others. To eradicate adult worms, doxycycline drugs can be used. The use of the above drugs also acts as a prevention against elephantiasis transmission in the community.
For filarial worm infections that cause large swelling in the scrotum or the part of the eye, surgery may be needed.
Because basically all people are susceptible to elephantiasis, then it is only natural to be vigilant and preventive from an early age. Maintaining environmental hygiene and personal hygiene is also important to prevent the spread of elephantiasis.
How To Prevent And Treat Elephantiasis
Because it involves mosquitoes as intermediaries, the way to prevent elephantiasis is to avoid mosquito bites as much as possible, especially in the morning and evening. The trick is to clean the environment so that mosquitoes do not nest, sleep using mosquito nets, wear long clothes while doing activities outside the home, and apply mosquito repellent on the skin that is not covered with clothes.
Taking regular worm medicine every year can kill worm larvae in the bloodstream. If someone has suffered from elephantiasis, he or she will be advised to take antiparasitic drugs, such as albendazole and ivermectin, or with diethylcarbamazine citrate. These drugs are effective for cleansing the blood of microfilariae, while preventing the spread to others. To eradicate adult worms, doxycycline drugs can be used. The use of the above drugs also acts as a prevention against elephantiasis transmission in the community.
For filarial worm infections that cause large swelling in the scrotum or the part of the eye, surgery may be needed.
Because basically all people are susceptible to elephantiasis, then it is only natural to be vigilant and preventive from an early age. Maintaining environmental hygiene and personal hygiene is also important to prevent the spread of elephantiasis.
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