onchocerciasis
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Key facts
- Medical condition (new).name
- Onchocerciasis
- Medical condition (new).synonyms
- River blindness, Robles disease
- Medical condition (new).image
- Onchocerca volvulus emerging from a black fly.jpg
- Medical condition (new).caption
- An adult black fly with the parasite Onchocerca volvulus coming out of its antenna, magnified 100×
- Medical condition (new).field
- Infectious disease
- Medical condition (new).symptoms
- Itching, bumps under the skin, blindness
- Medical condition (new).causes
- Onchocerca volvulus spread by a black fly
- Medical condition (new).prevention
- Avoiding bites (insect repellent, proper clothing)
- Medical condition (new).medication
- Ivermectin, doxycycline
- Medical condition (new).frequency
- 15.5 million (2015)
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
20 sectionsContents
- Cause
- Life cycle
- Signs and symptoms
- Mazzotti reaction
- Nodding disease
- Diagnosis
- Classification
- Prevention
- Elimination
- Treatment
- Antibiotics
- Ivermectin
- Moxidectin
- Epidemiology
- History
- Society and culture
- Research
- See also
- References
- External links
Onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness, is a disease caused by infection with the parasitic worm Onchocerca volvulus. Symptoms include severe itching, bumps under the skin, and blindness. It is the second-most common cause of blindness due to infection, after trachoma.
The parasitic worm is spread by the bites of a black fly of the Simulium genus. Usually, many bites are required before infection occurs. These flies live near rivers, hence the common name of the disease, river blindness. Once inside a person, the worms create larvae that make their way out to the skin, where they can infect the next black fly that bites the person. There are a number of ways to make the diagnosis, including placing a biopsy of the skin in normal saline and watching for the larva to come out, looking in the eye for larvae, and looking within the bumps under the skin for adult worms.