Saturday, November 22, 2014


Ick! Tapeworm Infecting Man's Brain Yields Genetic Secrets




This article goes over how doctors extracted a tapeworm from a 50-year old man from England. Then scientists mapped the genome of the tapeworm, and could possible help cure this rare infection. The British man was being missed diagnosed due to the fact of the rarity that tapeworms can survive in brain, and tapeworms are very rare in this country. Normally tapeworms are in the stomach and intestines, which leads to the normal symptoms of weight loss and pain in the stomach area. The doctors were shocked to find the tapeworm in the brain; hence the man was being misdiagnosed. There are some species of tapeworm that can travel and survive in the brain (obviously) and the spinal cord. The man was complaining about have headaches, seizures, altered smell and memory problems. The type of species of tapeworm is Spirometra erinaceieuropaei and is normally found in China, Japan, and South Korea. The tapeworm comes from undercook food, (frog or snakes) and contaminated water. With the proper gene study a drug treatment can be created using drugs like benzimidazole and praziquantel or brand new drugs by finding the sensitive the parasite has to other drugs on the market. The study helped map and give so much information about tapeworms that was never known before.



These tapeworms begin living in the intestines of dogs and cats and then eggs are expelled from the dogs and cats through their feces. The eggs are hatched in water and then are ingested by a second host such as frogs, reptiles and amphibians. The final host will be a predator that eats one of these infected species. Humans obtain these worms from undercooking these food sources or drinking the water with these procercoid larvae. I found this article very interesting because you never know where the parasite started off sometimes. It’s amazing the cycle of how these tapeworms start and finish inside a person. I hope the scientists are able to complete their genetic testing and find some drug that kills the tapeworm more efficiently then what already exists.

  




No comments:

Post a Comment