Autor: Carmen Barambio Laserna, Parasitology, 3rd year of Pharmacy and biotechnology
One day, the medical institute ESIC, in Faridabad, the Indian city most populated of Hyderabad state, received an 18-year old patient with convulsions up to 3 minutes of duration. After the medical inspection, they gave it him some medication to avoid the convulsions caused by the epileptic attacks. Afterwards, the doctor Nishanth Dev decided to do a magnetic resonance in which it was seen the brain’s patient full of larva. Due to the continuous spams, anti-inflammatory and anti-epileptic drugs were provided, in order to avoid the anti-parasitic medicines, which can provoke very serious side effects. So on, an echography test in the eye was performed; It was seen, his eye was infected and his testicle as well. After two weeks, he died of massive neurocysticercosis.
Doctor exposes “It was extraordinary because in this case, the brain was full of cysts and in other cases, three or four larvae are seen in the brain”. The case occurred 4 years ago. Nevertheless, the excelling of the infection reveals that up to now.
Neurocysticercosis is a nervous system disease caused by Taenia solium, which is the same parasite infecting the intestine. The person is infected by the ingestion of parasites’ egg in contaminated food with human feces of someone who has eaten pork meat infected with the larva.
In this case, the patient was vegetarian, he did not eat any meat. So, how could he get infected? Doctor Nishanth Dev deduced that, in this situation, eggs entered in the patient’s body after consuming contaminated water, vegetables or fruits.
WHO and FAO have established a programme which involves health services, educations and veterinarians to control this forgotten disease, whose symptoms include chronic headache, blindness, convulsions, meningitis and dementia.
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