When an unidentified man in Castellón, Spain, went to the hospital with chronic headaches, brain scans showed poorly-defined lesions, or tissue where the edges were blurred due to abnormal cell growth. Doctors believed that all signs were pointing to deadly cancer that had spread…….until they took a closer look. The good news was that the 60-year-old man could be cured; the bad news would make most people squirm. A higher resolution MRI was taken to determine the location of any tumors. What doctors found was that the man had no tumors. What he did have was tapeworm larvae. The parasite typically enters the human body when larval eggs are swallowed, with eggs developing into adult tapeworms in around 5-12 weeks. The cysts can travel anywhere in the body and can calcify in soft tissue. While eating under-cooked pork is the most common way to ingest adult tapeworms, the man’s condition was from ingesting the eggs, which then settled in the brain — a condition called neurocysticercosis. Left untreated, it can cause intracranial hypertension and seizures. Treatment can differ depending on the patient, but anti-parasitic drugs are often a first-line — as was the case with the Spanish man. He has since made a full recovery.
