Symptomatic therapy including fluid replacement – oral rehydration for signs of dehydration (fluid deficiency; > 3% weight loss): administration of oral rehydration solutions (ORL), which should be hypotonic, between meals (“tea breaks”) for mild to moderate dehydration.
If the patient is in poor general condition, antibiotic therapy should be started intravenously (“into a vein”):
Treatment with: Metronidazole (antibiotic from the nitroimidazole group) in invasive infection Nitroimidazoles act predominantly against pathogens in the tissue and only to a small extent in the intestine. Therefore, subsequent sanitation (eradication/complete elimination of a pathogen) by a contact amoebicide (acting in the intestine) is required:
Notice: In individual cases, additional antibiotics against bacterial superinfections are indicated.
The success of therapy should be checked by stool examinations.
Asymptomatic patients with cysts or minuta forms in the stool are treated only if the pathogen Entamoeba histolytica can be detected → 10 days of administration of a contact amebicide.