The photo shows the patient’s lower body covered in rice-grain-like foreign bodies, a sign of a nasty parasitic infection that can spread to the brain, eyes or muscles.
The photo was shared by Sam Ghali, an emergency room doctor at the University of Florida, who often shares images of strange and confusing conditions on his X (formerly Twitter) account, only to reveal the diagnosis a day later.
“Here’s one of the craziest treats I’ve ever seen,” he said in a caption accompanying the photo.
The doctor revealed that the said patient was suffering from a parasitic infection called cysticercosis. It is an infection caused by the larvae of the parasite Taenia solium (pork tapeworm) and occurs when humans ingest tapeworm eggs.
This can happen if you swallow contaminated food or water.
Taenia solium is thought to infect around 2.5 million people each year, mostly in poorer regions of Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.
According to Dr. S.Ghali, T. solium eggs can be found in undercooked pork.
However, you can also get infected from someone who doesn’t wash their hands properly after using the toilet, because the eggs get into the stool of the tapeworm host.
Tapeworm eggs that enter the body through contaminated food or water or by touching contaminated surfaces mature and grow into adult tapeworms within a few weeks.
Ghali explained that this is a condition called intestinal taeniosis.
“These adult tapeworms lay eggs, which in turn end up in human feces,” the doctor continued. “It is very important to note that only when these eggs enter the mouth from the feces, a clinical syndrome called cystericosis can develop,” he noted.
In these cases, the eggs develop into larvae that penetrate the intestinal walls and enter the bloodstream, allowing them to spread “literally anywhere in the body.”
As described by S.Ghali, the larvae can penetrate the muscles, tissues under the surface of the skin, eyes and even the brain, forming cysts.
The body’s immune system usually destroys the cysts, which calcify and form nodules that look like “rice grains” that can be seen on scans.
If the larvae travel to the brain tissue and form cysts there, the condition is called neurocysticercosis, and it can end “very badly,” Ghali said.
“It can cause headaches, confusion, seizures and other serious neurological problems,” he warned.
Neurocysticercosis is also a fairly common cause of epilepsy in the world.
The symptoms of cysticercosis depend on the number of cysts formed and where they form on the body.
Infections are usually treated with antiparasitic and anti-inflammatory drugs, although treatment is not necessary in every case. True, in some cases surgery is also required.
Ghali explained: “The prognosis of cysticercosis is generally good, but unfortunately some cases are fatal. It is estimated that about 50 million people worldwide become infected every year, and about 50,000 of them die.
So the moral of the story is: try to keep clean, always wash your hands and never eat raw or undercooked pork.”
Powered by thesun.co.uk
2024-08-31 10:31:29