2024-01-02 10:30:00
infectious disease
‘This’, a Chinese man in his 70s, was squirming in the colon… What was it?
Reporter Lim Min-young
Entered 2024/01/02 19:30
[해외토픽]
A 70-year-old man in China discovered five liver flukes in his stomach during a colonoscopy. / Photo = Daily Mail, UK Parasites were discovered in the colon of a 70-year-old man in China, making it a hot topic.
According to foreign media such as the British Daily Mail on December 28 (local time), five parasites were discovered in the bile duct of a man who visited a hospital in China. This man previously had colon cancer, and recently underwent an endoscopy due to a blockage in the bile duct. When the medical staff saw the parasites, they immediately extracted two of them and confirmed them to be ‘liver flukes.’ Afterwards, all parasites were removed and the man was instructed to take anthelmintic medication. Fortunately, the man did not suffer complications from parasites and was discharged from the hospital in good health.
Liver fluke is a parasite that mainly lives in East Asia and is also called ‘gandystoma’. Liver fluke is currently the parasite with the highest infection rate in Korea. In fact, according to data released by the National Cancer Information Center, the number of infected people in Korea is approximately 1.3 million. Liver flukes can be contracted mainly by eating raw or undercooked freshwater fish. In rare cases, infection can occur through the feces of an infected person entering the mouth.
Liver flukes can cause the chronic disease ‘Clonorchis’ by parasitizing the bile ducts, the passage through which bile flows down. People infected with liver fluke show different symptoms depending on the number of parasites. Infections with small numbers of liver flukes may cause no or mild symptoms. However, if more than 100 animals are infected, you will experience nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. If not treated in time, it can lead to gallstones, cholangitis, and in severe cases, bile duct cancer.
If you are infected with liver fluke, treat it by taking anthelmintic drugs such as praziquantel. Most patients are cured by taking it just three times a day. However, if the bile duct is scarred by parasites, it is difficult to recover. If you have a large number of infected liver flukes and have cholangitis, you need to take antibiotics to treat it. If you have ever been infected with liver fluke, you should not eat raw freshwater fish once more as there is a high risk of reinfection. If you enjoy eating freshwater fish, it is a good idea to get a stool test to check for infection.
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