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| Thread ID: 124760 | 2012-05-17 21:52:00 | 
Tapeworms Living Inside People's Brains | SurferJoe46 (51) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1275971 | 2012-05-17 21:52:00 | OK --- this is gross so I'll drop the first line down what I think is below this window for those who might barf or at least gag . Have a nice meal! Remember your keyboard is not barf-proof . Gross starts here::: Courtesy of Theodore E . Nash , M . D . Theodore Nash sees only a few dozen patients a year in his clinic at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland . That’s pretty small as medical practices go, but what his patients lack in number they make up for in the intensity of their symptoms . Some fall into comas . Some are paralyzed down one side of their body . Others can’t walk a straight line . Still others come to Nash partially blind, or with so much fluid in their brain that they need shunts implanted to relieve the pressure . Some lose the ability to speak; many fall into violent seizures . Underneath this panoply of symptoms is the same cause, captured in the MRI scans that Nash takes of his patients’ brains . Each brain contains one or more whitish blobs . You might guess that these are tumors . But Nash knows the blobs are not made of the patient’s own cells . They are tapeworms . Aliens . A blob in the brain is not the image most people have when someone mentions tapeworms . These parasitic worms are best known in their adult stage, when they live in people’s intestines and their ribbon-shaped bodies can grow as long as 21 feet . But that’s just one stage in the animal’s life cycle . Before they become adults, tapeworms spend time as larvae in large cysts . And those cysts can end up in people’s brains, causing a disease known as neurocysticercosis . advertisement | article continues below “Nobody knows exactly how many people there are with it in the United States,” says Nash, who is the chief of the Gastrointestinal Parasites Section at NIH . His best estimate is 1,500 to 2,000 . Worldwide, the numbers are vastly higher, though estimates on a global scale are even harder to make because neurocysticercosis is most common in poor places that lack good public-health systems . “Minimally there are 5 million cases of epilepsy from neurocysticercosis,” Nash says . He puts a heavy emphasis on minimally . Even in developed nations, figuring out just how many people have the illness is difficult because it is easy to mistake the effects of a tapeworm for a variety of brain disorders . The clearest proof is the ghostly image of a cyst in a brain scan, along with the presence of antibodies against tapeworms . The closer scientists look at the epidemiology of the disease, the worse it becomes . Nash and other neurocysticercosis experts have been traveling through Latin America with CT scanners and blood tests to survey populations . In one study in Peru, researchers found 37 percent of people showed signs of having been infected at some point . Earlier this spring, Nash and colleagues published a review of the scientific literature and concluded that somewhere between 11 million and 29 million people have neurocysticercosis in Latin America alone . Tapeworms are also common in other regions of the world, such as Africa and Asia . “Neurocysticercosis is a very important disease worldwide,” Nash says . 3806 LINK::: . com/2012/jun/03-hidden-epidemic-tapeworms-in-the-brain/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=" target="_blank">discovermagazine . com You are free to leave the room and barf wherever you want to . See? There is some hard news today . |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 1275972 | 2012-05-18 02:32:00 | There's loads of parasites that can live in all parts of you and do all sorts of gross things. A whole bunch of them aren't killable either - or is that more you can't be cured? Similar results anyway, you obviously haven't watched enough Discovery Channel or Animal PLanet. | pctek (84) | ||
| 1275973 | 2012-05-18 02:43:00 | I'm just a harbinger of bad news, that's all. I DO know about squishy-crawlies in humans - I was a Biomedical Tech for a few years. You should see some of them inside people that show up during an autopsy! |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 1275974 | 2012-05-18 03:18:00 | Just pickle your self with burbon, see how they like that | Gobe1 (6290) | ||
| 1275975 | 2012-05-18 03:57:00 | That's gonna get you in trouble with the TWAS* * Tape Worm Appreciation Society. |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 1275976 | 2012-05-18 05:03:00 | I DO know about squishy-crawlies in humans - I was a Biomedical Tech for a few years. Ah. Yes, some really good reasons to never leave the house I've seen. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 1275977 | 2012-05-18 06:25:00 | Nice picture of a politicians brain SJ ... ... explains quite a lot to the layman and especially relevant to a NZ MP by the name of John Banks ... :rolleyes: | SP8's (9836) | ||
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