A 35-year-old woman arrives at a hospital in France, complaining of electric shocks running down her legs. She even told the doctors that she had been feeling quite weak and had fallen a number of times recently. According to a report of the case published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the woman’s unusual symptoms were because of Tapeworm larvae lurking in her spine (Jacquier & Piroth, 2018).

The woman told the doctors that she hadn’t left the country recently and had been living in France. However, she did say that she had contact with cattle and rode horses. In addition to her symptoms, she even said that she had a difficulty riding the horse over the last three months.

The MRI revealed a lesion in her ninth thoracic vertebra, located in the middle of her spine. Doctors suggested surgery for removing the lesion. Tests revealed that the lesion was caused by an infection with a small tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus; the tapeworm is found in farm animals including pigs, goats, cattle, sheep and dogs. Also known as hydatidosis, the tapeworm causes a disease called echinococcosis. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease causes larvae from cysts to rapidly grow in a person’s body. Typically, the cysts grow in the lungs and liver, however, they can appear in other parts of the body also, including, the central nervous system and bones. Although, infections of the spinal column and bones are rare, making up only 0.5 to 4 percent of the cases (Neumayr et al., 2013).

The eggs of the tapeworm are passed in the stool of dogs and other farm animals that become infected because of ingesting food and water that is contaminated with tapeworm eggs. Once these eggs are ingested by farm animals, they develop into larvae. The eggs develop into adult worms when they are ingested by the dogs again. Humans become infected with the disease if they consume food and water that is contaminated with dog stool, ingesting the tapeworm eggs or if they consume berries and plants gathered from fields where the infected dogs have been. Humans are not involved in transmitting the back the disease to dogs, for this reason, they are basically considered as “accidental” hosts. In addition to this, the worms are incapable of growing into adult worms in humans. An infectious-disease specialist at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Dijon, who treated the woman, Dr. Lionel Piroth said that the disease was quite rare in France, therefore, making it unclear how the woman got the infection. Moreover, she did not report having any contact with dogs. The doctor ruled out a possibility that the woman could have gotten sick because of eating the vegetables that were infected with the parasite; the vegetables could have been contaminated by an “unknown” dog. In addition, the woman was the only one who got infected in her family.

The treatment plan, in addition to surgery included anti-parasitic medication. The woman complained of no lingering signs or symptoms of the infection, following up after nine months.

References

Neumayr, A., Tamarozzi, F., Goblirsch, S., Blum, J., & Brunetti, E. (2013). Spinal cystic echinococcosis–a systematic analysis and review of the literature: part 2. Treatment, follow-up and outcome. PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 7(9).

Jacquier, M., & Piroth, L. (2018). Vertebral hydatidosis. N Engl J Med, 379(02), e5.