Woman's 'brain tumor' turns out to be a parasite, a tapeworm growing in her head

Magnetic resonance image in a person with neurocysticercosis showing many cysts within the brain. Cysticercosis is a tissue infection caused by the young form of the pork tapeworm. ... A specific form called neurocysticercosis, which affects the brain, can cause neurological symptoms.

A parasite in the brain sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but it’s a preventable infection from a pork tapeworm known as neurocysticercosis — a leading cause of adult onset epilepsy worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A New York woman began having terrible nightmares, hallucinations, and insomnia, and then she started to drop things. She was making strange phone calls she didn’t remember and forgetting where she was. Visits to urgent care did not reveal the cause, and an MRI was eventually done; it revealed a lesion adjacent to an area of the brain controlling speech. Doctors thought she had a malignant tumor and scheduled surgery.
It did not turn out to be a tumor, instead a cyst holding a baby tapeworm.

“Sure enough, a baby tapeworm came out of that lesion, This is one case where the parasite was the preferable diagnosis. “She had a single parasite in her head that we were able to take out. We were very happy; it was one of those rare situations where you see a parasite and you’re like, wow this is great!” ” said Dr. Jonathan Rasouli, the chief neurosurgery resident at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and another surgical team member.

This kind of parasitic infection, cysticercosis, is relatively rare in the United States and was not considered when the doctors were making their original diagnosis; it doesn’t happen like many food borne illnesses that are caused by bacterial pathogens, and is not caused by eating under cooked pork.
Instead, a person first has to have an intestinal tapeworm, which sheds eggs that end up in their feces. The eggs - larval cysts - can infect tissues, like muscles or the brain. So if feces from a person with a tapeworm contaminates food that gets eaten, then cysticercosis - the parasitic tissue infection - develops. Therefore the disease is far likelier to happen to members of a household in which someone is carrying a tapeworm than to members of households without a tapeworm case. Under cooked pork can, however, cause a tapeworm if larval cysts are in the meat.

Tapeworm and cysticercosis happen to people around the world. Rates are highest in areas with poor sanitation practices and pigs that range freely. While it’s more common in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it can also happen in North America when people don’t use good hand washing practices. Hand washing can prevent these type of parasites as well as diseases like Flu.
Please share, print and follow these hand washing poster series for children, educate early.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has targeted cysticercosis for “public health action” and considers it a neglected parasitic infection. They want to improve diagnostics and increase awareness of the illness, among other goals.