Tapeworm removed from man’s brain after months of ‘awful’ headaches, Texas doctors say - Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Tapeworm removed from man’s brain after months of ‘awful’ headaches, Texas doctors say - Fort Worth Star-Telegram |
- Tapeworm removed from man’s brain after months of ‘awful’ headaches, Texas doctors say - Fort Worth Star-Telegram
- A Man With a Tapeworm in His Brain Just Had Surgery to Remove It After 10 Years - Health.com
- Raw sewage is a toxic stew that can infect people, pets - Sun Sentinel
- Doctors remove tapeworm from man’s brain: ‘It was life-threatening’ - Yahoo Food
- Tumour on Edmonton woman's liver was rare parasite, not cancer - National Post
| Posted: 27 Jan 2020 07:41 AM PST [unable to retrieve full-text content]Tapeworm removed from man's brain after months of 'awful' headaches, Texas doctors say Fort Worth Star-Telegram  |
| A Man With a Tapeworm in His Brain Just Had Surgery to Remove It After 10 Years - Health.com Posted: 28 Jan 2020 12:25 PM PST  this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines.  |
| Raw sewage is a toxic stew that can infect people, pets - Sun Sentinel Posted: 02 Jan 2020 12:00 AM PST  Then there's E. coli, which can lead to diarrhea, fever, abdominal pain, cramping, nausea, vomiting and even kidney failure if not addressed properly. Salmonella, commonly associated with food poisoning, is another threat lurking in the muck, Smith said.  |
| Doctors remove tapeworm from man’s brain: ‘It was life-threatening’ - Yahoo Food Posted: 30 Jan 2020 09:33 AM PST  View photos Texas neurosurgeon Dr. Joran Amadio performed brain surgery on Gerardo Moctezuma who contracted a brain tapeworm. (Photo: Ascension Health) A Texas brain surgeon successfully removed a tapeworm from a man's brain after the patient reported severe headaches. Neurosurgeon Jordan Amadio, MD, of Ascension Medical Group in Austin, conducted the May surgery on Gerardo Moctezuma, an otherwise healthy man from Mexico, who had been living in the United States for more than a decade. The patient had worsening headaches, and after he collapsed at a soccer game, he was hospitalized. With brain scans, doctors detected a suspicious lesion (a "grape-like group of cysts") near the man's brainstem along with hydrocephalus, which is pressure inside the skull. "It was a life-threatening surgical emergency due to the location," Amadio tells Yahoo Lifestyle. Moctezuma had neurocysticercosis, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls a parasitic infection caused by larval cysts of the pork tapeworm that reaches the brain or spinal cord. (When the infection travels to other areas of the body, it's known as cysticercosis). This is how a person can become infected, according to the CDC: "For example, a person eats undercooked, infected pork and gets a tapeworm infection in the intestines. She passes tapeworm eggs in her feces. If she doesn't wash her hands properly after using the bathroom, she may contaminate food or surfaces with feces containing these eggs. These eggs may be swallowed by another person if they eat contaminated food. Once inside the body, the eggs hatch and become larvae that find their way to the brain. These larvae cause neurocysticercosis."  View photos Texas doctors removed a tapeworm from a man's brain, which they called life-threatening. (Photo: Ascension Health) Amadio tells Yahoo Lifestyle that years ago, doctors found a tapeworm in the brain of Moctezuma's sister. "That suggests there could have been some local exposure," he says. The infection, which Amadio says is preventable and often curable, results in about 1,000 hospitalizations per year in the United States but only a small percentage require surgery. "Sometimes the immune system can clear the infections on their own," he says. "Otherwise, they can go unrecognized for years." After a three-hour surgery, Amadio removed the tapeworm in its entirety and prescribed Moctezuma medication to kill off any remaining cells, he says. "It's been nearly a year and the patient is disease-free." Amadio says the disease is common in developing countries with poor sanitation and unregulated pork practices. And though humans are hosts and pigs are intermediate hosts, anyone could become infected with cysticercosis or neurocysticercosis. What's important, says Amadio, is that "the eggs that are transmitted in human feces in improper food preparation. The type of food doesn't matter." "The best prevention strategy is the universal use of hygiene," Amadio tells Yahoo Lifestyle. "Making sure food is cooked properly, avoid undercooked meats and wash your hands — the simplest and most important way to prevent infection." Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:  |
| Tumour on Edmonton woman's liver was rare parasite, not cancer - National Post Posted: 26 Jan 2020 08:23 AM PST EDMONTON — Cassidy Armstrong says she washes her hands, cleans her vegetables and doesn't own any pets. "How did I get it? I don't know," says the 36-year-old from Edmonton. Armstrong had surgery in November for what she thought was a rare, terminal cancer. She found out a day or two later that the grapefruit-sized lump doctors had removed from her liver during a four-hour operation was a cyst created by a rare parasite. "It felt like a movie," she recalled in an interview. "There was a big group of people. They were disease doctors. "They said, 'We have good news for you. What you have is not cancer … What we think you have is this very rare parasite called Echinococcus multilocularis."' The tiny tapeworm found in foxes, coyotes and domestic dogs can be passed on to people. Dr. Stan Houston, an infectious disease expert at the University of Alberta, said there were only two cases in all of North America prior to an outbreak in Alberta that, including Armstrong, has infected 15 people since 2013. He said there has also been at least one case in each of Saskatchewan, Quebec and Ontario.
  "It is absolutely new," he said. "It's a serious disease for the individuals who get it and we are probably going to be seeing more cases. "Nonetheless it remains a rare disease." Veterinarians first identified the parasite in the wild and, since then, have determined that the tapeworm has become common in Alberta wildlife, particularly coyotes. "It's actually tiny," said Dr. Claudia Klein, associate professor in the faculty of veterinary medicine at the University of Calgary. "You can see the adult tapeworm, barely, with your bare eyes." Recent studies have found a high incidence of infected coyotes, foxes and rodents across Alberta, including at off-leash dog parks in Calgary. The tapeworm is spread through the feces of coyotes and foxes that have eaten infected rodents. Dogs can get it through contact with the feces or by eating infected rodents. The worm can be passed on to people on fruits or vegetables, by handling contaminated soil or through an infected pet's fur. "Up until a few years ago, that tapeworm was very rare in Canada and we hadn't heard of a case in humans," said Klein. She noted it is common in China and Europe. Patients can carry the tapeworm for many years. In Armstrong's case, doctors believe she may have had it for a decade. Armstrong's symptoms started a few years ago with a dull ache in her ribs and some tiredness. The signs would come and go. An X-ray and blood tests couldn't determine what was wrong. "In the last six months, it was just constantly there," she said. Armstrong finally asked for an ultrasound, which found the lump on her liver. It was diagnosed as fibrolamellar carcinoma. Surgery was scheduled for a week later. "They removed 65 per cent of my liver, my gall bladder, a couple of nodules from my lungs, scraped my diaphragm," she said. "It was a very, very big surgery." When the doctors told her what they'd discovered, she was confused. pn-pullquote text="They removed 65 per cent of my liver, my gall bladder, a couple of nodules from my lungs, scraped my diaphragm" source="" /] "I was kind of doped up so I was like, 'Well, is that a good thing?"' she said. "They said, 'Yes, it's a better thing' than what they thought I had." She is on medication, probably for the rest of her life, in case any of the parasite remains in her body. Houston said 13 of the 15 patients in Alberta have been dog owners. People can prevent the spread by washing their hands thoroughly and cleaning any vegetables that have been grown outside. "Everybody pets a dog and most people eat produce," he said. "People can't give it to other people, but theoretically your dog could give it to other people." Armstrong, who hasn't had a dog since she was a little girl, said she worked as a mechanic and had contact with farm equipment, but she has no idea where she picked up the tapeworm. "You can get it from eating the wrong carrot," she said. "I wash my hands and I clean my stuff. I'll probably never know."  |
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