Anthelmintic Treatment

part of the extermination of sources of infection; a complex of therapeutic and prophylactic measures for ridding man and animals of helminthiases. The Russian term degel’mintizatsiia was first proposed by Academician K. I. Skriabin in 1925. In a broader sense, anthelmintic treatment means the destruction of helminths not only in man and animals but also in the environment (the soil, water, food products, forage, and so on). Anthelmintic treatment of man and animals is accomplished mainly by means of specific pharmacological agents (anthelmintics), with subsequent obligatory neutralization of the parasites that are eliminated, as well as their fragments, eggs, and larvae.

A distinction is made between therapeutic anthelmintic treatment, which is conducted after the disease develops, and prophylactic treatment, which is generally done in a planned fashion. The latter is very widely used in livestock raising. The most important feature of prophylactic anthelmintic treatment is that anthelmintics are given not only to obviously sick animals but also to all the other animals in the same herd. Prophylactic anthelmintic treatment is carried out at set times determined by epidemiology, the epizootiology of helminthiases, and the biology of the parasites causing them. For example, to prevent gid and echinococcosis of sheep, sheepdogs are given prophylactic anthelmintic treatment every three months. The procedure is most effective when the helminths have not yet reached sexual maturity in the host (so-called preimaginal anthelmintic treatment); in this case infected animals are prevented from contracting the disease again and spreading infected matter in the environment.