[Clinical manifestation and treatment of pulmonary acariasis]

Abstract

A survey on pulmonary acariasis was carried out in the grain store and in the Chinese medicinal herb plant. Of 363 persons examined, 92(25.3%) were mites-positive in their sputum. 65 of them had symptoms and signs attributed to pulmonary acariasis, the incidence being 17.9%. The main clinical manifestations were productive cough, hemoptysis, chest pain, dyspnea asthma and marked eosinophilia. Roentgenogram of these cases revealed widening hilum shadow, increased and disordered lung markings, multiple cloudy shadow and nodular opacities ranging from 1-5mm in diameter scattered throughout the lower field of lungs. All the patients were treated with three courses of metronidazole. In each course a daily dose of 0.6g (0.2g tid) or 0.8g (0.4g bid) was given orally for seven days with an interval of 7-10 days between two courses. After three courses, the clinical manifestations and radiographic findings were much improved in most cases, eosinophilia dropped to normal limit, mites disappeared from sputum in 94.4% of patients. All these showed that metronidazole is rather effective in treating pulmonary acariasis.