In a rare and surprising medical incident, Spanish doctors revealed that a patient who was believed to have brain cancer was actually infected with parasitic worms living inside his skull.
The details of the case were published in the scientific journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, where doctors explained that a 60-year-old man had been suffering from increasing headaches and minor behavioral changes for two weeks, prompting him to seek medical attention.
Doctors diagnosed a 60-year-old man with metastatic brain cancer after scans revealed multiple tumors — but what they actually found was live tapeworm larvae lodged in his brain.
When the tests were carried out, the CT scan showed lesions in the brain that appeared to be metastatic cancerous tumors, and the doctors prescribed a steroid drug to treat the symptoms, and his condition improved rapidly.
Man's Suspected Brain Cancer Turns Out to Be Something Much Creepier https://t.co/Y5BoRMGTuV
But the surprise came when further tests failed to find any cancerous tumor in the rest of his body, prompting doctors to perform an MRI scan, which revealed the frightening truth: the lesions were not cancerous, but rather cysts caused by the pork tapeworm, scientifically known as Taenia solium.
This means that the man was suffering from neurocysticercosis, a form of parasitic infection that travels to the brain and causes inflammation and increased pressure inside the skull, and can lead to serious, life-threatening complications.
This infection is usually transmitted in two ways: first, through the consumption of undercooked pork, which leads to adult worms in the intestines; and second, through the ingestion of worm eggs excreted in the feces of infected individuals, which then migrate to various body tissues, including the brain. This second type, which infected the Spanish man, is rare in developed countries, but it is dangerously widespread in impoverished regions of the world and is a major cause of epileptic seizures that appear later in life.
But what is worrying about the story is that the man did not travel to any area infested with the worm, but rather worked on construction sites all his life, where he shared food and facilities with migrant workers coming from areas where the disease is prevalent, indicating that he contracted the infection locally in Spain, a very rare phenomenon in Western Europe, according to doctors.
The report concludes that this case highlights the importance of considering neurocysticercosis as a possible diagnosis in similar cases, even in countries where brain cancer is statistically more common.
Although the idea of having worms in the head may be terrifying, doctors confirm that this disease is treatable and rarely fatal, making its diagnosis much better than cancer.
