Center for Disease Control and Prevention
A team of doctors from India discovered more than a hundred parasites housed in the brain of an eight-year-old girl who suffered from severe headaches and convulsions from this cause.
According to the Daily Mail, the family of the girl – whose identity was not disclosed – requested the help of the doctors after noticing this series of symptoms.
Initially, the doctors believed that they were abscesses in the brain, so they applied a treatment based on steroids.
But this treatment was counterproductive as it impaired the girl’s ability to walk and made it difficult for her to breathe. Also, the girls weight increased radically from 40 to 60 kilograms.
Given the ineffectiveness of the treatment and with the girl’s condition worsening, the family took her to the Fortis hospital in Gurgaon province; There, a new team of professionals scanned the patient’s brain and found that she was infested with parasites.
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“The scan of [the] girl’s brain showed more than 100 white dots, formed due to tapeworm eggs,” said Praveen Gupta, chief of neurology at the hospital.
The cestodes, it should be noted, are wormlike parasites that lodge in the human body after consuming contaminated vegetables or poorly cooked pork, according to the report. These parasites reach the brain through the bloodstream and lodge there causing a disease known as neurocysticercosis.
This condition affects the nervous system causing a series of symptoms that the patient displayed from the beginning.
With this new information, the doctors began a new treatment for the neurocysticercosis for the girl who, by that time, had already lost the ability to walk.
”We had absolutely no idea that our healthy and cheerful daughter could ever get such a dreadful disease. But I think we are extremely lucky to get [the] right treatment before [the] eggs hatched and do more damage to our daughter’s brain,” said the father of the child, who also omitted his name.
According to the Daily Mail, the girl, being the smallest victim of these parasites has already returned to school and is progressively improving in health.
The transmission of cestodes in the central nervous system is one of the main causes of epilepsy, according to information from the World Health Organization; However, it is also the most preventable cause since it is avoided by disinfecting food and maintaining good hygiene habits.
