Posted on 11/30/2006 9:25:08 PM PST by dennisw
A potentially fatal disease rarely seen here has popped up in Houston four times in the past two months. It's linked to tapeworms and their eggs.
He ate at mobile kitchens until he found out food contaminated with eggs from a tapeworm almost killed him.
"He's scared now. He's scared of any food from outside," said Marjorie, his daughter & translator.
The tile worker immigrated from El Salvador 20 years ago said early symptoms were subtle.
"It was a mild headache but it wouldn't go away," Marjorie explained. "It was just there and it wouldn't go away with Tylenol."
Doctors at a clinic gave him medicine for high blood pressure.
A few days later Ramirez passed out and didn't wake up for eight days.
"This is a picture of the cyst," said Dr. Aaron Mohanty, a UT Houston Medical School neurosurgeon.
Dr. Mohanty found the cyst with tapeworm larvae in Ramirez's brain.
It's a disease called cysticercosis.
"If they delayed 12 hours, six to 12 hours more he would not have survived," said Dr. Mohanty. "He was deeply unconscious."
This was Mohanty's fourth case in two months of a disease most often seen in developing countries.
"I think it's just a chance factor," said Dr. Mohanty.
In all four patients the UT Houston neurosurgeon removed the cysts through a small incision in the brain.
"The cycle starts with a human that's infected with the tapeworm," said Dr. Luis Ostrosky with the UT Houston Medical School.
Dr. Luis Ostrosky tells us the eggs from a tapeworm are spread by a human host who doesn't practice good hygiene after using the bathroom.
An unsuspecting victim then eats the contaminated food.
"These eggs hatch in the intestine and go through the gutwall and into the circulation and get stuck somewhere," said Dr. Ostrosky.
(Excerpt) Read more at khou.com ...
Is this another one of those third world freakish diseases that pop up regularly from illegals?
yep
This is why YOU MUST WASH YOUR HANDS before and after you go potty...
Add that to tuberculosis and Chagas Disease as part of the price of cheap lettuce.
Speaking of which, was there any substance to that lettuce e-coli scare being caused by illegal alien workers defecating in the lettuce fields or is that being covered up?
Yup.
and in you --if you if you eat "taco wagon" food.
I think I just may start thinking twice about eating at restaurants (any restaurant, just look in the kitchen).
They harvest our food and cook our food.
Silly me. I thought this was going to be about the new House majority!
I recently saw this on one of those World's Most Extreme type programs. It was disgusting. The person died and the brain was filled with numerous burrows with the head of the tape worm. I forget how they said it migrated to the head and I am not sure they said that it did migrate to the head. I've always understood that our bodies are full of parasites, that parasites are what are responsible for genetic evolution. Far be it from me to know if that is true or not.
This isn't evolution. Some $hit in his food.
I'm never eating out again!
Not MY food.....they may harvest SOME of it but, they sure as he** don't cook it.....unless I'm watching exactly what they are doing.
Yuck.
...must....resist...joke...
No sh#t, Sherlock.
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