Tapeworm Infection: Symptoms, Causes And Treatment
Tapeworm infection is common in people who eat uncooked or poorly cooked beef or pork. According to data published by the World Health Organization (WHO), this parasitic disease causes intestinal symptoms and, in the most severe cases, neurological complications.
How to get infected? Which tapeworms infect humans? These and other questions may arise when talking about this parasite.
Below we take a closer look at the key features of this parasite.
Infection of the parasite
Taenia is a genus of flatworms in the tapeworm class. They are extracellular internal parasites because they live inside their host but do not act at the cellular level like viruses.
They have a complex life cycle and, depending on the stage of the life cycle, two diseases can develop in the host:
- Adult tapeworms cause an intestinal infection when they attach to the gut of their main host.
- Larval stage worms cause an even more serious disease, cysticercosis, which occurs when the larvae are present in several organs and tissues of an infected person.
Adult worms are clearly divided and flat in shape. At the end of the worms, or scolex, there are barbs that allow them to attach to the walls of the host’s gut with their mouths and feed on food that passes through the gut.
A complex life cycle
According to the U.S. Center for Infectious Disease Control and Prevention, there are three types of human tapeworms :
- Taenia saginata .
- Taenia solium .
- Species of Asian origin, Taenia asiatica.
It is important to stress that humans are the only final hosts for this parasite, unlike many other animal-to-human diseases. To simplify their complex life cycle, we can summarize the steps into three main ones.
- First, eggs or pieces of adult worm are excreted with the feces of an infected person, releasing them into the soil where they can remain for up to months.
- Pigs and cows can then accidentally eat these eggs, and over time, the worm-shaped worms settle in the animal tissues, causing cysticercosis.
- Finally, humans eat meat containing young worms, and one of the worms develops into an adult individual in the gut, ending its life cycle.
How tapeworm infection symptoms
Most often, tapeworm infection is asymptomatic, but some have intestinal symptoms and other complications. Symptoms may include:
- Abdominal pain and loss of appetite.
- Gradual weight loss for no apparent reason.
- Generally a confused stomach.
These symptoms do not appear until the parasite is large in size. Unless the doctor does a stool culture (from which the eggs of an adult worm can be seen), an infected patient may have had a worm infection for years without knowing it.
Cysticercosis, on the other hand, is a separate issue and is in fact only caused by Taenia solium. In this case, a person does not become parasitic by eating meat containing larvae, but by eating eggs of the worm directly. The parasite mistakenly thinks that the human is an intermediate host (pig or cow) and causes cysticercosis, i.e., the larvae invade the tissues of the human body. However, it is good to point out that this is not an inherent cycle of tapeworms.
In addition, the clinical symptoms vary significantly depending on the tissues involved. However, when the larvae nest in the brain, neurological symptoms reveal the disease. These include:
- Persistent and severe headaches
- Epileptic seizures
- Complexity
- Memory impairment
Tapeworm infection: prevention and treatment
Both cysticercosis and intestinal infection can be treated with antiparasitic drugs. Especially in the latter case, the forecast is very good. Cysticercosis, on the other hand, sometimes requires surgery and, if left untreated, can be life-threatening.
The best method of contraception is, as in almost all situations, good hygiene and food safety. This is why these intestinal parasites are so rare in prosperous countries: food production is closely monitored and the sale of meat contaminated with cysticercosis is avoided.
