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Woman’s tingling feet turned out to be a parasite in her spine


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2018 Jul 12, 5:56pm   1,925 views  5 comments

by MisterLefty   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  

A woman who kept falling over and felt tingling in her legs was shocked to discover the cause.

The 35-year-old ended up in the hospital where medics scanned her spine and, to their surprise, they found tapeworm larvae wriggling around the patient’s vertebrae.

The French woman, who is not named, arrived at the hospital complaining of suffering what felt like “electric shocks” running down her legs.

She felt weak and had experienced a number of falls.

Doctors at the hospital in Dijon noted she hadn’t traveled out of France but did own a cat and came into contact with cows.

They wrote in a case report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine: “Physical examination revealed impaired sensation in both legs and weak foot flexion.”

As well as examining the patient, they ran a series of tests.

The results showed the 35-year-old had a raised white blood cell count.

But it was an MRI scan that revealed the true cause of the woman’s pain.

The scan showed a lesion at her ninth vertebra — in the middle of her spine.

Surgeons investigated and found the lesion was, in fact, tapeworm larvae, caused by an infection of Echinococcus granulosus — a small tapeworm found in dogs and some farm animals.

The tapeworm can cause a disease called echinococcosis, which can cause dangerous cysts to grow in the lungs, liver and other organs.

The doctors’ report added: “Infection can cause cystic lesions in the liver and lungs and also in the central nervous system and bones.”

They can go unnoticed and untreated for years before a person realizes they are infected.

The danger comes when cysts rupture, which can end up proving deadly, triggering mild to severe anaphylactic shock.

As well as surgery, doctors put the woman on anti-parasitic medication.

After nine months she was clear of her infection and had no symptoms of any recurrence.

https://nypost.com/2018/07/12/womans-tingling-feet-turned-out-to-be-a-parasite-in-her-spine/


Comments 1 - 5 of 5        Search these comments

1   Automan Empire   2018 Jul 12, 6:08pm  

Thanks a lot for posting this nightmare fuel!
2   Patrick   2018 Jul 12, 6:31pm  

There are worse things. Like the maggots that can infest people's eyeballs.

I could post a photo, but you can find it if you want.
4   Ceffer   2018 Jul 12, 8:01pm  

Gee, if the parasite had been a little higher up, she would have had an inexplicable and baffling case of nymphomania with all that tingling.

She wasn't even a school teacher.
5   NDrLoR   2018 Jul 12, 8:27pm  

Patrick says
Like the maggots that can infest people's eyeballs.
Pretty much what happened to one of my co-workers. He was working in his garage one night when a big fly grazed the side of his face. He didn't think anymore about it until about an hour later when his eye began to itch, burn and swell. He looked into a mirror and saw tiny worms in the lower part of his eye. He went to emergency mui pronto and they flushed and flushed his eyes for I think two hours--they can gravitate to the other eye as well. He seemed to be cleared up and was sent home with some drops. When he got home, about an hour later they started up again and he had to return to emergency. He didn't get much sleep that night.

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