Picture: HAP/Quirky China News/REX

If you’ve ever been tempted by a refreshing gulp of water from a mountain stream, think again – a Chinese man, Cao, 41 sucked in some worm eggs as he drank, and they grew into a six-inch-long parasite living inside his brain.

The tapeworm, which had to be removed by neurosurgeons at San Jiu Brain Hospital in Guangzhou first caused him to have a numb tongue and slurred speech as it grew around his brain.

Then he began to have epileptic seizures and crippling headaches.

Doctors have removed a 5in parasite from a man’s brain in Guangzhou, capital of southern China’s Guangdong Province (Picture: Rex)

At first, no hospital could work out what was wrong with him – then a brain scan revealed the horrific parasite coiled around his brain.


An operation by specialists was able to remove it. His wife, Li, said her husband had the habit of drinking spring water while working in the mountain and doctors suspect this is how the parasite eggs got into his body.