Bizarre case- 700 tapeworms found in brain, chest & lungs of patient

A bizarre case of tapeworm disease wherein a doctor found 700 tapeworms in the brain, chest & lungs of a patient who came to him with complaints of severe headache and seizures.

This new case from China’s Zhejiang province sounds something very scary and distasteful. The patient from Zheijiang province was referred to the hospital with complaints of persistent headaches and seizures. He had been living in pain for over a month. Dr Wang Jian-rong from the department of infectious diseases did a medical check of the patient and found out he had taeniasis, a parasitic disease due to infection with tapeworms.

The patient was subjected to radiological scans when to the surprise and dismay of everyone his scans revealed that he had as many as 700 tapeworms in his brain, chest, and lungs.

According to the CDC, Cysicercosis is a parasitic tissue infection caused by larval cysts of the tapeworm Taenia solium. These larval cysts infect the brain, muscle, or other tissue, and are a major cause of adult-onset seizures in most low-income countries. A person gets cysticercosis by swallowing eggs found in the faeces of a person who has an intestinal tapeworm. People living in the same household with someone who has a tapeworm have a much higher risk of getting cysticercosis than people who don’t. People do not get cysticercosis by eating undercooked pork. Eating undercooked pork can result in intestinal tapeworm if the pork contains larval cysts. Pigs become infected by eating tapeworm eggs in the faeces of a human infected with a tapeworm.

The doctor blamed the condition on a hotpot pork meal the man had eaten almost a month before his check-up. He added the worms had already caused damage to the patient's organs. "There are multiple presences of space-occupying lesions in the patient's brain. It's also in the lungs and fills up the muscles inside the chest cavity," said Dr Wangtold peer video.