The sad story of a man from Hangzhou from the Zhejiang Province of East China, Zhu Zhongfa, started with uncooked pork. The 46 years old man was found with more than 700 tapeworms in his brain and lungs after a month. The man ate his dinner uncooked and ingested the eggs of the Taenia Solium, which is a parasite found in the pork, known as the tapeworm.
One month was enough after eating the uncooked pork, and the man started to faint and to suffer regular seizures. After going to the hospital, the doctors found more than 700 tapeworms in his brain and lungs. The larvae ingested by Zhu Zhongfa traveled from the digestive system through his blood and reached the brain after they hatched into worms. After the worms got better into the man’s body, they produced cysts and caused infections.
At the same time, cases of people who ingested worm eggs and the effects can trigger after many years. The symptoms given by these worms are headaches, blindness, seizures, and after that, dementia could follow. However, the Taenia Solium infection can happen at any time and any part of the body.
How did this man get infested with tapeworms?
The worms enter the body only if people consume uncooked pork. The adult worms are causing cysts and are leading to a cysticercosis infection. The dangerous part is the infection is happening in the nervous system or the brain.
However, Zhu Zhongfa started to have a lot of seizures and fainting after a few months, and at the hospital, Dr. Huang Jianrong subjected the man to brain and chest MRI scans. The results were shocking when they saw more than 700 worms in the brain and lungs. The brain was suffering from lesions, and the lungs had cysts as well. The case is solved with antiparasitic drugs and other medications for protecting the man’s organs.
Finally, this kind of infection with parasites usually happens more often in the farming areas, such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Most of the cases of the parasite were eradicated in the U.K. and the U.S. after the World Health Organization declared Taenia Solium, the most significant cause of deaths and diseases.
