Patients with more than 15,000 eggs per gram of stool may experience cramps, diarrhea, irritability, anorexia, or enteritis caused by cystercoids destroying the intestinal villi in which they develop.

Egg output can be sporadic so a couple of stool tests a few days apart may be needed to diagnose the infection.

[1] H. nana is the most common cestode in humans with infection prevalence highest among children and in warm arid climates with poor sanitation facilities.

[4] Turkish children living shanty towns have higher prevalence than those in school provide apartments, with similar infection rates between boys and girls.

Socio-economic factors and lack of parent education are strong influences on the high prevalence rate.

[citation needed] While in Zimbabwe, H. nana infections occur in children in small towns and high-density suburbs.

In contrast, the nematodes class, such as hookworms, have complete digestive tracts and separate orifices for food ingestion and waste excretion.

Each worm has a scolex, which is an anterior "head" segment with a single row of 20-30 retractable hooks (rostellum).

[1] Hymenolepis diminuta worms are the same shape as H. nana but are much larger, up to 90 cm long and 44 mm wide.

Their scolex does not have hooked rostellum like the H. nana species but they do have similar unilateral genital pores and 3 testes per proglottid.

The oncospheres of H. diminuta are similar to H. nana's except they lack hair like filaments embedded in their inner membrane and are two times their size.