This common food can bring worms in your body, which invade the brain. When they enter our organism through the food, they move easily through the whole body, the eyes, every tissue, especially the brain.
No matter how horrible and scary this sounds, but these worms can cause life-treating consequences.
According to Dr. Effrossyni Gkrania- Klotsas, in 2013 her team of researchers while examining the head of a British man, found a strange type of tapeworm, which has never been seen before in the UK.
A few years before this, a team of doctors at the Addenbrookes Hospital at Cambridge had a male patient who checks in the hospital due to severe headaches. After a few tests, he came back, complaining of new symptoms. As he said, he visited Thailand, South Korea, Japan and China recently, the last one with the most reported cases of a parasite known as Spirometra erinaceieuropaei.
One of his symptoms, besides the severe headaches, were seizures and weakness, all caused by this parasite. The patient was diagnosed with sparganosis infections, caused by tapeworm larvae plerocercoid diphyllobothroid. The doctors managed to surgically remove the worm because no drug worked effectively.
In humans, taeniasis is an infection caused by the following tapeworms: Taenia solium (pork tapeworm), Taenia asiatica (Asian tapeworm) and Taenia saginata (beef tapeworm). You can get infected with these tapeworms by consuming raw or undercooked pork or beef.
The brain can be infected by 3 types of tapeworms. Experts say that the main reason for parasitic infection in human is the pork tapeworm. There are 2 ways to get infected by the pork tapeworm
- If you consume raw or undercooked pork originating from infected pigs.
- By direct contact with feces of an infected pig or human, which can infect many tissues. If the larvae get into the nervous system and the brain, it can result in neurocysticercosis.
This infection is very common in some parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but there have also been some cases reported in Europe, due to the increased global distribution of cheap meat from these parts of the world.
Until now, Dr. Klotsas has treated 3 cases of neurocysticercosis.