A obscure parasitic infection in the brain got a shock of attention Wednesday when governmental prospect Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated he assoonas suffered from it.
The condition, understood as neurocysticercosis, is a brain infection connected to larvae from pork tapeworms. It’s unusual: It hospitalizes approximately 1,000 to 2,000 individuals every year in the U.S.
Neurocysticercosis triggers seizures, headaches, lossofsight, blurred vision, lightheadedness, psychosis or memory loss. In some cases, it might even be deadly.
The infection generally follows a series of occasions: People consume raw or undercooked pork that brings a tapeworm. They then shed tapeworm eggs in their stool and pollute food or surfaceareas by not cleaning their hands. As a result, they or those around them who consume that food or touch those surfaceareas can unintentionally swallow tapeworm eggs.
Once they are swallowed, the eggs hatch into larvae, which can relocation from the intestinaltract to the brain. The larvae kind fluid-filled pockets, or cysts, lookinglike small, clear balloons about a centimeter in size.
The eggs are “real sticky,” stated Dr. Clinton White, an contagious illness teacher at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “They get on individuals’s hands and under their fingernails. Hand-to-mouth I believe is an essential path of transmission.”
Overall, the condition is improperly comprehended by health care companies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which thinksabout neurocysticercosis to be a “neglected parasitic infection.”
“It’s an essential illness and gets overlooked a lot,” White stated.
On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Kennedy, who is running for president as an independent, when experienced a parasitic brain infection.
Kennedy’s project press secretary, Stefanie Spear, stated in a declaration reacting to the Times shortarticle: “Mr. Kennedy tookatrip thoroughly in Africa, South America, and Asia in his work as an ecological supporter, and in one of those places contracted a parasite. The problem was solved more than 10 years ago, and he is in robust physical and psychological health.”
According to the Times, Kennedy stated in a 2012 deposition that, 2 years earlier, physicians had identified an unusual area on his brain amidst signs of memory loss and psychological fogginess. One medicalprofessional concluded it was triggered by a worm that got into his brain and then passedaway, Ke