Table 2.

Parasite carriage among IBS cases and healthy controls.

Characteristic	IBS cases (N = 163)	Healthy controls (N = 194)	Parasite carriage OR (95% CI)	Total subjects (N = 357)
Any parasite (N)	27	30	1.09 (0.62–1.91)	57
Pathogenic parasite (N)	9	8	1.36 (0.51–3.61)	17
Individual parasites (N)
B. hominis †   G. lamblia ‡   E. coli   E. histolytica ‡ /dispar   I. butschlii   E. nana   C. mesnili   T. trichiura ‡   A. lumbricoides ‡   H. nana ‡	13 5 15 18 7 9 5 3 1 1	20 7 16 26 6 7 1 1 0 0	0.75 (0.36–1.57) 0.85 (0.26–2.72) 1.14 (0.55–2.39) 0.81 (0.43–1.53) 1.41 (0.46–4.27) 1.56 (0.57–4.29) 6.12 (0.71–52.82) 3.62 (0.37–35.13) — —	33 12 31 44 13 16 6 4 1 1

(1) Mantel-Haenszel odds ratios (ORs) were calculated to determine the association between IBS and parasite infection. Factors such as age, gender, poverty index, household water source, latrine or toilet use, and neighborhood were not confounders and were not included in the final model.

(2) Individuals may have been infected with more than one parasite.

(3) Individual parasites include Blastocystis hominis, Giardia lamblia, Entamoeba coli, Entamoeba histolytica, Entamoeba dispar, Iodamoeba butschlii, Endolimax nana, Chilomastix mesnili, Trichuris trichiura, Ascaris lumbricoides, Hymenolepis nana.

^†Pathogenicity depends on parasite load; classified as commensal for the analysis.

^‡Denotes pathogen.