Tapeworm in Chinese man’s brain four years removed by British scientists

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Tapeworm in Chinese man’s brain four years removed by British scientists

PUBLISHED : Friday, 21 November, 2014, 10:18pm
UPDATED : Saturday, 22 November, 2014, 3:24am

Agence France-Presse in London

Time-lapse scans show the worm's movements. Photo: National Picures

Scientists in Britain have removed and studied a rare tapeworm that lived in a Chinese man's brain for four years, researchers said.

During that time, the parasite travelled from the right side of the brain to the left, absorbing nutrients from the brain itself as it went.

The tapeworm causes sparganosis, an inflammation of body tissues that can trigger seizures, memory loss and headaches when it occurs in the brain.

Surgeons removed it and the patient was now "systemically well", the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute said on Thursday.

It was the first time the tapeworm, Spirometra erinaceieuropaei, has been reported in Britain. Only 300 cases have been reported since 1953.

The worm in the man's brain was 1cm long, but the species can grow to more than a metre.

The man is thought to have ingested the tapeworm accidentally by eating small infected crustaceans from lakes, eating raw amphibian or reptile meat, or by using a raw frog poultice - a Chinese remedy for sore eyes.

"We did not expect to see an infection of this kind in the UK, but global travel means that unfamiliar parasites do sometimes appear," said Effrossyni Gkrania-Klotsas of Addenbrooke's NHS Trust.

The team managed to sequence the rare parasite's genome for the first time, allowing them to examine potential treatments.

"Our work shows that, even with only tiny amounts of DNA from clinical samples, we can find out all we need to identify and characterise the parasite," Gkrania-Klotsas said.

The doctor said the DNA study underlined the importance of a global database of worm genomes, to help identify and treat parasites.