A Chinese woman has contracted a deadly parasitic disease in her spine, which has left her doctors in shock.
The details go back to the suffering of a 46-year-old Chinese woman, whose identity was not revealed, from pain that began in her lower back and spread through her hip and lower leg, which prompted her to go to the doctor.
The woman stated that the pain has worsened “gradually” since it began three years ago, and has become equivalent to six out of ten on the pain scale, according to Russia Today.
Scans conducted at the People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, in Beijing, revealed a cyst growing on the patient’s spinal cord.
Doctors later found that the cyst was full of a deadly parasite called Taenia solium.
When tapeworms are found in the central nervous system, in the brain or spinal cord, this is known as neurocysticercosis.
According to The Sun newspaper, when neurocysticercosis is on the spinal cord, this is called spinal cysticercosis.
Neurocysticercosis is a rare but potentially fatal condition if left untreated.
Studies indicate that up to 7% of those infected suffer a stroke.
The doctors wrote in the Journal of Medical Case Reports that the parasite moved to the spinal cord through vessels connected to the spine.
Doctors explained that the cyst was removed and the woman was treated with deworming medication. They said that three years following the surgery, her back pain had decreased from 6 to 2.
Symptoms of neurocysticercosis can vary depending on where the lesions form, the extent of the infection, and the person’s immune response.
According to MedicalNewsToday, common signs and symptoms include:
– seizures
Chronic headache
Increased pressure in the brain
Other symptoms may include:
Neurological problems affecting the function of the spinal cord, brain or nerves
Decreased ability to think and remember
People develop the fatal case when they swallow T. solium eggs found in undercooked, infected pork.
An infected person may also excrete the eggs in their feces and contaminate the environment when they defecate in the open.
Humans can also become infected with Taenia solium eggs due to poor hygiene (through fecal-oral transmission) or ingestion of contaminated food or water.
Ingested tapeworm eggs turn into larvae (cysticercosis) in various organs of the human body, where they enter tissues such as muscles and the brain and form cysts there.