Breaking: CNN – Worms Can Invade Your Brain from Eating This Common Food

Can you imagine that by eating a particular food your brain can be invaded by worms? Once they enter your body through food, worms easily move in almost any part of it, especially your eyes, tissues and brain. It is not a classic parasite we are talking about – this one is pretty dangerous and it can reach into your head.

Dr Effrossyni Gkrania-Klotsas says that in 2013, they examined the head of a British man and they found a tapeworm. Until that moment, they had never seen such a case in the United Kingdom. 

About four years before that, a group of doctors at Addenbrookes Hospital at Cambridge received a patient with firs experienced symptoms, especially headache. But, the patient returned soon after that. The patient was a Chinese descent who had recently been to China. China, Japan, Thailand and South Korea had the greatest number of such cases of parasites better known as Spirometra erinaceieuropaei. 

Gkrania-Klotsas explained “When the patient returned, he had all new symptoms.” At that stage, worms were moving through a new part of the man’s brain. This made his legs weak and he had seizures. He was diagnosed with Sparganosis, a dangerous infection. Upon such diagnose, doctors had to remove the worm through a surgery, as there was no drug that could be used to treat the infection effectively. 

In the period between 1953 and 2013, there were 300 infections of Spirometra tapeworm. As experts believed, infections were more common in people that do not know much about worms, in certain parts of Asia. 

Dr Hayley Bennett, a geneticist from the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute, in Cambridge, whose team has recently sequenced the genome of rare worms, explains “These worms are some of the most mysterious worms we have reached.” This team knew that this lifecycle is a lot more complicated. 

Adult forms of Spirometra tapeworm only appear in the intestines of cats and dogs, but worm’s eggs are excreted through their feces. These eggs may end in the water and contaminate it. These juvenile forms of tapeworms, or the larvae, may stay in the water for a long time or they may end in snakes or frogs. 

People can get invaded through a direct contact with infected animals or even ingestion. As Gkrania-Klotsas says, they received a patient in Cambridge who had drunk some water while he had been swimming in an infected lake. 

Bennett explained, “The larvae can encyst in the brain or any other place in the human body.” The cysts may cause blindness, paralysis, tissue damage and sometimes death. Bennett believed to be able to find out more about such e from the genes of the worms and their way of functioning in order to ease future treatment and diagnosis. 

Designing a drug for this worm particularly is not cheap, because it is quite a rare infection. However, through a comparison with other similar kinds, researchers may finally determine which drugs may be used. 

They took samples of the worm from an infected patient. Such samples may act as a drug target, and also help in recognizing resistance to drugs. Eventually, they can identify large genes and genome from such small samples. Bennett added, “You could also develop a diagnostic test.” 

Pork tapeworm 

Tapeworms may be found in different forms, but three of these can instantly affect the brain. Helena Helmby, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine explained, “It is mainly the pork tapeworm that’s the main brain.” 

People can get infected by pork forms, Taenia Solumin, in two forms: 

The first form is through eating undercooked pork from infected pigs. This results in taeniasis, which is an adult worm that lives in the intestines. 

The second form of infections is actually the larval form. The infection can occur through a contact with the -feces of an infected human or a pig. The infection can reach and affect other tissues. If the larval form reaches the nervous system, especially the brain, it may cause a condition called neurocycticercosis. Once the infection affects the brain, it causes epilepsy. The World Health Organization said that about a third of epilepsy cases in countries where this disease is considered as native are people who had been infected by neurocysticercosis. 

The infection keeps spreading due to poor hygiene and sanitation. Helmby says, “in fact, you can actually infect yourself,” because even by not washing your hands you can consume the eggs of an adult worm that lives in your intestine. “Self-infection is common.”

According to the World Health Organization, the global spreading of pork tapeworms get serious, especially due to the increased number of cases in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Gkrania-Klotsas had three patients in Cambridge who have already had neurocysticercosis. 

Concerns 

The treatment for Spirometra involved surgeries until now, but Bennett’s team in Cambridge succeeded to find drugs, like praziqantil, that may be pretty effective. These drugs are commonly used in the treatment of schistosomiasis, or snail fever. Other drugs commonly used in the treatment of cancer may be used in the treatment of such infections. Treatments involving anthelmintic drugs target the worms, even though infections with pork tapeworms are pretty common. 

Both Hemlby and Gkrania-Klotsas are concerned about the risks brought by the increased international traveling and global food trade. Fast development of food export and import increases the risk of ingesting infected food. This is another reason why there is a need for more vigilance with food inspection. Helmby says that there will be more cases of infections in places where such infections were severely eliminated, like the United Kingdom, for example. 

Gkrania-Klotsas says, “I’m confident there will be more of this in the future.” She receives patients that had got infected without even travelling abroad. The infection follows people, wherever they go. 

Experts say that people who plan to travel should be more careful about visiting regions where infections are common. The constantly increasing number of infected individuals can be put under control, if health experts can get ready for the consequences. 

Hembly says, “The challenge at the moment is to be able to treat these infections.” This is a challenge for genetics researchers; they have the chance to discover the secrets of the mysterious parasites.