A pensioner in China has an eight-centimeter-long worm lodged in her brain, according to the South China Morning Post.
According to doctors, a 61-year-old woman from Guangdong Province suffered from numbness, chills, and seizures that gradually worsened. The cause remained undetermined for many months until a neurologist noticed a distinctive mark left by a moving parasite on an MRI scan. Surgeons operated on the woman and removed an eight-centimeter-long live worm from her brain—presumably the larva of the Spirometra tapeworm, which causes a rare disease.sparganosis
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The patient later revealed that the infection could have originated in childhood. She said her mother treated her toothache with a folk remedy: she caught a frog and applied its paw to the aching tooth. She also frequently drank raw spring water and even tried snake wine.
The patient’s husband stated after the surgery: “We finally found the cause of her health problems. The surgery went smoothly, and her condition has improved significantly.” Specialists warn that the larvae can migrate through tissue for decades before settling in any organ, so symptoms may remain undetected for a long time.
It was previously reported that a parasite lurked under the skin of a 26-year-old woman in Romania for a month. A live, 11-centimeter-long worm lodged itself under her upper eyelid.
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