Development of cognitive abilities of children infected with helminths through health education.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of health education in learning and cognitive development of children infected, previously treated in an endemic area for helminthiasis.

Methods: It is a longitudinal, experimental, with random allocation of participants. The study included 87 children of both sexes enrolled in the school hall of Maranhão, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and divided into two groups: intervention and control. Initially the children were submitted to the parasitological fecal examination for infection diagnosis and, when positive, they were treated. For the data collection, a structured questionnaire and the psychological tests Raven, Wisc-III and DAP III were applied, before and after the educational intervention. For the group comparison, the Mann Whitney test was used, and established significance level of 5%.

Results: It was found that previously infected children who received the educational intervention, children showed higher performance than the control group in strutured questionnaire (p<0.05).

Conclusions: It is acceptable to suppose the positive influence and the importance in the use of educational interventions in the cognitive recovery and learning of children previously treated with anthelmintics.