sneaky worms
Tape soles can infect people in two ways: eating cysts in undercooked meat either Ingesting eggs through fecal contamination.. The parasite infects pigs and when they ingest eggs from feces, the worms hatch in the pigs’ intestines, perforate the intestines, reach the bloodstream and migrate to a variety of tissues and muscles. There, they form into encapsulated larvae called cysticerci. If a person eats undercooked meat that contains cysticerci, the larvae will develop into adult tapeworms in the person’s intestinal tract and live there, possibly for years. Meanwhile, infected people will pass eggs in their stool.
If those eggs spread through poor hygiene and sanitation (into water, food, etc.) and get into a person’s mouth, they do what they do in pigs. The eggs hatch, enter the bloodstream, and then wander around, embedding themselves in various tissues, muscles, and organs, including the brain.
When cysticerci enter a person’s central nervous system, a disease called neurocysticercosis (NCC) occurs, which is the diagnosis given by doctors in Spain. Tests after his MRI revealed that his immune system had produced antibodies against Tape solesconfirming the infection.
NCC can be severe, causing seizures, significant neurological deficits, cognitive impairment, stroke, and other problems. But it can also be asymptomatic. The severity depends on where in the brain the worms settle. Luckily for the man, the effects were relatively mild. Doctors prescribed two antiparasitic medications and he recovered.
“Our case emphasizes that the absence of travel history should not prevent NCC from making the differential diagnosis of multiple brain lesions with ring enhancement, even in regions where metastatic cancer is statistically much more likely,” they concluded. If they had been infected with the worms earlier, “unnecessary invasive oncological procedures would have been avoided and rapid and specific antiparasitic therapy would have been initiated.”
