How do you kill intestinal parasites
How do you kill intestinal parasites |
- See what happens when tapeworms infest your brain - Popular Science
- A teen went to the ER for seizures. Doctors found tapeworm eggs in his brain - USA TODAY
- New species of 'golden death' bacterium digests parasitic worms from the inside out - Science Daily
| See what happens when tapeworms infest your brain - Popular Science Posted: 30 Mar 2019 02:28 AM PDT  Tapeworms are revolting no matter where you find them. But when they are in your gut, at least the parasites are in their natural habitat. We are, unfortunately, their primary hosts and, as parasites, their job is to colonize our intestines, shed eggs out our bums, and infect other animals. Normally, they perform this job relatively quietly. They eat your food and hang out inside your guts, but they don't generally want to kill you. That'd reduce their number of potential homes. That's why many people infected with tapeworms stay fairly symptom-free (we regret to inform you that often folks realize they're infected when bits of the worms start coming out in their poop). In the rare event the intestinal infection does cause symptoms, they usually include loss of appetite, weight loss, an upset stomach, and perhaps abdominal pain. But that's all assuming they stay in your gut. As one tragic case report in the New England Journal of Medicine this week shows, that's not always what happens. Tapeworms can get into other parts of your body and cause much more severe symptoms. A teenager in India who had been infected with tapeworms died as a result of numerous cysts—formed by the tapeworms—in his brain (he had them throughout his body as well), which doctors only found when he showed up at the emergency room in Faridabad with generalized tonic-clonic seizures. These full-brain seizures, plus his groin pain, eye swelling, and general confusion are fairly common symptoms for bodily infection with tapeworms. It is possible for tapeworms to migrate out of human intestines, according to the Mayo Clinic, but this kind of full-body infection results from a different disease pathway and is far more common in another animal: pigs. The kind of tapeworm infection an animal gets largely depends on which stage of life the worm is in when you ingest the parasite. Tapeworms, specifically the species Taenia solium, have a life cycle that depends on both humans and pigs (there's also a beef tapeworm, but it doesn't cause bodily cysts). T. solium begins life as an egg inside a human, though it quickly departs out the anus. Pigs who consume either feces or infected water also ingest the eggs. Those eggs travel to the pig's guts, where they hatch, burrow through the intestinal wall, and migrate to the farm animal's muscles and organs. There they become cysts. This kind of infection is known as cysticercosis, which is different from what we'd call "having tapeworms" the way most people get them. Humans usually become infected because they eat undercooked pork with infective cysts, thus leaving the worms (called cysticerci) alive. The cysticerci travel to our guts, where they mature into adult tapeworms roughly 10 feet long, which in turn lay eggs and start the whole process over. Technically, though, as this case study proves, if a human eats the tapeworm eggs, we can get cysts just like pigs. That's what happened to this poor boy—he must've eaten the eggs at some point, gotten infected, and not realized until his body was riddled with cysts. (And please note, you can't get these cyst just from eating undercooked pork.) The specific form of the disease this boy had, neurocysticercosis, is very rare in developed nations because farms in those areas have hygiene standards intended to avoid any potential contamination of both pigs and humans. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it rare worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that roughly 2.5 to 8.3 million people suffer from neurocysticercosis every year, mostly in developing parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Subsistence farmers there don't have access to the same resources to prevent disease, and thus infections are far more common. If you're reading this in a country like the U.S., though, you're highly unlikely to ever even be exposed to tapeworm eggs unless you travel internationally. Consider yourself lucky.  |
| A teen went to the ER for seizures. Doctors found tapeworm eggs in his brain - USA TODAY Posted: 28 Mar 2019 06:34 PM PDT An 18-year-old man who went to the emergency room after suffering seizures soon discovered he had parasites in his brain, according to a case study published Wednesday. In addition to tonic-clonic seizures, during which a person can lose consciousness and experience violent muscle contractions, the man's parents said he'd been having pain in his groin for a week, according to the study published in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine. During an examination, the man appeared confused and had swelling over his right eye, according to the report from Nishanth Dev and S. Zafar Abbas at the ESIC Medical College and Hospital, Faridabad, India. An MRI and ultrasound would soon reveal the cause of his symptoms: several well-defined cysts in his cerebral cortex, brain stem, cerebellum, eye and right testicle. His diagnosis: neurocysticercosis, a parasitic infection caused by cysts containing the larvae of a pork tapeworm. Neurocysticercosis is the most severe form of the disease and can be contracted when a person swallows "microscopic eggs passed in the feces of a person who has an intestinal pork tapeworm," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Once inside the body, the tapeworm's eggs hatch and become larvae that travel to the brain, causing the potentially fatal infection. Doctors decided not to give the young man antiparasitic medication because of the high number of cysts and the possibility it would worsen swelling in the brain and inflammation. Given the cysts near his eye, inflammation could've led to a loss of vision. Tapeworm: Her legs were tingling. Then, doctors pulled a tapeworm out of her spine 'Brain-eating amoeba': CDC testing Texas pool after parasite kills 29-year-old Rat lungworm: Man left paralyzed after eating a slug has died, Australian media reports The patient was instead given dexamethasone, often used to treat inflammation, and anti-seizure medication. He died two weeks later. The study did not identify the man. Neurocysticercosis is a leading cause of epilepsy worldwide according to the World Health Organization. Although the disease is prevalent mainly in developing countries, the CDC estimates there are 1,000 new hospitalizations related to the disease in the United States each year. Treatment can be incredibly costly: the average charge for hospitalization related to the disease was $37,600, according to the CDC. Follow N'dea Yancey-Bragg on Twitter: @NdeaYanceyBragg
Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/03/28/teen-dies-tapeworm-egg-infection-his-brain/3305340002/  |
| Posted: 28 Feb 2019 12:00 AM PST A new species of bacterium, Chryseobacterium nematophagum, has been found to digest its hosts -- roundworm parasites -- from the inside out. The findings, which are presented in the open access journal BMC Biology, suggest that the bacteria may potentially be used in future, to control roundworm infections in animals, plants, and, potentially, humans. Professor Antony Page, University of Glasgow, the corresponding author said: "Nematodes, commonly called roundworms, cause serious chronic diseases in animals and are particularly common in grazing livestock. Some nematodes, such as hookworms, also infect humans. These parasites have developmental stages that naturally feed on bacteria before they infect the final host. This study describes a newly discovered bacterial species, called Chryseobacterium nematophagum -- or golden death bacillus -- that effectively kills a wide range of important nematode parasites." The researchers isolated two new bacterial strains -- JUb129 and JUb275 -- from free-living roundworms found on a rotten apple in Paris, France, and a rotten fig in Bangalore, India. In laboratory experiments, the researchers fed the bacteria, which produce yellow mucoid colonies that have a pungent odor, to larvae of the nematode worm C. elegans, a common model species for the study of nematode pathogens. The authors observed that the C. elegans larvae that fed on the bacteria became immobilized within one hour. Of the exposed larvae, 50% were killed within three to four hours. By seven hours after ingesting the bacteria, all worms had died. After 24 hours, only outline traces of the larvae, representing the worms' exoskeletons -- known as cuticles -- were present. C. elegans worms were not repelled by the presence of C. nematophagum bacteria. In the laboratory experiments, the worms remained on the bacterial lawns cultivated by the researchers and actively ingested the bacteria, which multiplied inside the worms' pharynx and digested them from the inside out. Infection and digestion of the worms' pharynx was followed by rupture of the bacteria into the rest of the body and digestion of the worms' insides, until they had been completely consumed. To investigate which genes might be involved in conferring the nematode-killing ability of C. nematophagum, the authors compared the genomes of the two newly identified species to those of five other Chryseobacterium species that are not known for killing nematodes. They found that C. nematophagum possesses specific genes that encode enzymes which break down chitin and collagen. These genes are part of about 13% of the bacteria's' genome that is unique to C. nematophagum. The authors tested C. nematophagum against a number of different parasitic nematodes, including Trichostrongylid and Strongylid worms, which infect cattle and domesticated animals, and some of which are becoming resistant to worm treatments. These worms were killed by the bacterium in the same way as C. elegans. Professor Page said: "Nematode parasites are very common, cause disease and have an economic impact on livestock rearing. They are mainly controlled by a limited group of drugs called anthelmintics, which are becoming less effective as worms are becoming resistant to many of these drugs. Our findings raise the possibility that C. nematophagum -- or the specific properties that make it highly virulent in many nematode species -- could provide a future means of controlling increasingly problematic parasites that currently are a major burden to public health and the farming industry." Story Source: Materials provided by BioMed Central. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.  |
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