Although common in developing countries, it is rare in the United States.
Recently, doctors found a tapeworm egg in the brain of a New Yorker, Live Science reported. What happened surprised doctors a lot, since such a disease is rarely recorded in the United States.
A forty-two-year-old patient named Rachel Palma came to the doctor complaining of unusual symptoms: memory problems and motor problems in the limbs. To find out the cause, the doctor performed a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. In the picture, he noticed a strange formation in the brain and suggested that it could be a malignant tumor, so he recommended the woman to have surgery. She agreed.
During a surgical operation, her attending physician Jonathan Rasouli noticed at the site of the lesion not soft pliable tissue, but something hard, like a small stone. He retrieved it for further analysis. Taking a tissue sample and examining it under a microscope, the doctors realized that it was an egg from a pork tapeworm, a tapeworm from the order Cyclophyllidea that parasitizes mammals. According to the doctor, seeing an egg at the site of the tumor, he was relieved. The doctor diagnosed neurocysticercosis, a parasitic infection of the central nervous system.
The prevalence of the disease in the world / WHO.
Neurocysticercosis is common in Latin America, South and Southeast Asia. It is also common in parts of Africa, but is not endemic to the United States. Most often, infection occurs due to contact with pig feces, but Rachel Palma did not leave the country and did not interact with pigs and their secretions.
Pork tapeworm larvae can freely move around the host's body. They choose the brain because this organ is abundantly supplied with blood and nutrients. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), neurocysticercosis is the most common cause of epilepsy in developing countries. Besides Rachel's symptoms, the parasite also causes chronic headaches, blindness, seizures, meningitis, and dementia.
In April, doctors from Taiwan recorded another rare medical case: a 29-year-old girl was struck by bees from the Halictidae family, feeding on moisture from her tear ducts.
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Alexey Evglevsky