DOCTORS have removed more than 30 tapeworm eggs and larvae from a man’s brain after he came in complaining of sickness.
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DISGUSTING: The Chinese villager had over 30 tapeworm eggs and larvae in his brain
Wu Mingsheng, 46, was suffering sudden blackouts and chronic nausea when he finally went to hospital.
The villager was admitted to Guizhou Medical University Hospital in China, with hydrocephalus – fluid in the brain caused by severe pressure, such as a tumour.
Doctors made the decision to cut into his head – where they found the live tapeworm larvae as well as more than 30 eggs.
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DELICATE: The patient in surgery during the extraction
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The baby boy has wrinkles on the face, has a very shrunken body and hollow eyes. The baby does not look like a new born at all.
“After opening his skull, we discovered his nerve tissue covered in eggs and larvae – live ones”
Neurosurgeon Yang Ming
Neurosurgeon Yang Ming said: “After opening his skull, we discovered his nerve tissue covered in eggs and larvae – live ones.”
Wu ended up being diagnosed with a “neurocysticercosis” a rare parasitic disease caused by the “pork tapeworm”.
It can go undiagnosed for long periods of time, which leads to it often being called a “hidden epidemic”.
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RECOVERING: Wu Mingsheng is now on medication and his pain is slowly going away
A week after his surgery, Wu is recovering and most of his symptoms have gone, but he still remains on medication.
Doctor Yang said: “Neurocysticercosis is often the result of livestock such as pigs cohabiting with humans, whose excrement contaminates the pigs, whose pork they then eat.
“That’s how the infection happens.”
