Tapeworms: How to tell if you have one - Fox News

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Tapeworms: How to tell if you have one - Fox News Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:00 AM PST A tapeworm is a parasite that you can get if you eat the infected and undercooked meat of an animal. (iStock) Dear Dr. Manny, I ate something on a trip to Brazil and now I've been having terrible stomach issues. I've read about people who have had tapeworms and I don't know if I have one. How do you know if you have a tapeworm? What do the eggs look like? How do you diagnose a tapeworm? Will the worm die on its own? Is it common to get a tapeworm?  Thanks for your question. A tapeworm is a parasite that you can get if you eat the infected and undercooked meat of an animal. So you could have gotten a tapeworm by eating something. It's hard to know if you have a tapeworm on your own, but the most common symptoms are abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, unexplained weight loss, dizziness, trouble sleeping, and jaundice. WHICH MEAT IS HEALTHIEST TO EAT?  When you go to the bathroom, look at your stools. If you see white pieces in there, you might have a tapeworm infection. Your appetite might change. If you're eating a lot more but weighing a lot less, then it might be a tapeworm. Some kinds of tapeworms cause anemia symptoms because they eat all the Vitamin B12. This is a problem because your body needs that vitamin in order to make red blood cells. If you have no sense of touch, trouble walking, and feel stiff, that's a sign of anemia. Paired with the other symptoms, you might just have a tapeworm. Tapeworm eggs look like little grains of rice or seeds. If they hatch, the larvae can sometimes crawl up your intestines and live there. This causes cold-like symptoms, such as coughing. WHY IS YOUR STOMACH MAKING NOISES? In many situations, however, most people don't even know they have tapeworms. There can be almost no symptoms. When doctors diagnose tapeworms, they do it via a stool test. They check the stool for worm parts, or proglottids, and eggs. The patient collects a sample and sends it to the lab for testing. Technicians view the sample through a microscope to see if they can find proglottids or eggs. The Centers for Disease Control mandates that three different samples be tested. Tapeworms must be treated because they do not go away on their own. They reproduce with eggs and grow in the human intestine. Some tapeworms grow to be 25 feet long inside their hosts. The larvae travel to other parts of the body and infect parts of the tissue, in the brain and in other areas. These larvae form cysts that can cause damage. Tapeworms are not very common in the U.S. The laws and inspection practices have ensured that infected meat is not sold. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP If you think you have a tapeworm, you need to talk to your doctor about getting tested.

A man ate hot pot and got tapeworms in his brain. He had to be dewormed. - The Washington Post Posted: 27 Nov 2019 07:22 AM PST Days later, the man started feeling dizzy, having headaches and experiencing epilepsy-like symptoms such as limb twitching and mouth foaming while trying to sleep at night, according to the report. Co-workers witnessed one of Zhu's episodes and dialed for emergency help. He was seen at a hospital where scans and tests showed that he had multiple intracranial calcifications, abnormal deposits of calcium in blood vessels to the brain; and multiple intracranial lesions, according to researchers. Medical staff wanted to examine him further, but he dismissed their concerns because he didn't want to spend more money, according to the report. The symptoms that sent Zhu to the hospital persisted after he left, researchers reported. He became frightened. He spoke with his relatives about seeking medical treatment before deciding on care at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University Medical College. Huang Jianrong, the hospital's chief doctor, consulted Zhu and learned that he had eaten pork and mutton not too long ago, according to the report. The chief physician recommended an MRI, which showed the man to be suffering from multiple brain lesions and tapeworms in the brain, the report stated. The tapeworms were the root of Zhu's symptoms, but he was confused about how his hot pot meal led to a brain invaded by parasites, researchers said. Jianrong explained to Zhu that the meat for the hot pot probably was tainted with larval tapeworms that survived because of the pork and mutton being improperly cooked, according to the report. Zhu admitted to just simmering the meat, explaining that the bottom of the spicy pot was red, which obstructed his ability to see if the meat was thoroughly cooked, researchers wrote. The construction worker fully recovered after doctors dewormed and reduced the pressure on his brain, the report said. Researchers wrote that because the brain has the largest blood circulation, it is often affected by the ingestion and infection of parasites entering the body through contaminated meat or water. The impact, they said, can cause severe brain damage and be fatal. Neurocysticercosis occurs when a person swallows microscopic eggs passed in the feces of a person who has intestinal pork tapeworm, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can be prevented by practicing good hygiene such as hand washing and treating people infected with intestinal tapeworm. The parasitic infection mainly affects people who live in subsistence farming communities in developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, according to the World Health Organization. In March, the New England Journal of Medicine published a paper about an 18-year-old man in India who died of neurocysticercosis after experiencing seizures and confusion. More recently, a 42-year-old New York woman was diagnosed with the same parasitic infection when doctors went in to remove a cancerous tumor from her brain only to find a tapeworm instead. The CDC estimates that there are about 1,000 cases of neurocysticercosis in the United States each year, with most cases being reported in New York, California, Texas, Oregon and Illinois. Read more:

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