A French woman is riding in their spare time, but since three months ago, she has problems: Something seems to be wrong with her legs. The complaints are getting stronger. It feels like you get an electric shock. In addition, they felt a weakness in the extremities. Several times the 35 crashes-Year-old.
Finally, she seeks out the emergency room at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Dijon in France. The Doctors noted that her Perception is disturbed in the legs and you can move your ankles only to a limited extent.
The woman lives in France, has not traveled to other countries. She has a cat, and had cattle contact, reports Marine Jacquier and Lionel Piroth in the journal “NEJM”. Pre-existing conditions you mention.
A blood test shows an increased number of white blood cells, which may indicate that the body of pathogens controlled. Similarly, the value of the so-called C-reactive Protein is increased. This also speaks for an infection or inflammation.
The Doctors look at the spine of the patient using a magnetic resonance imaging more accurate. Due to the discomfort you suspect that the signals are not transmitted properly from the brain to the nerves in the legs. On the recording, you will discover the spine is actually a great harm to the breast, a lesion. Something has sealed off there.
Lesion on the spine
SURGERY on the spine
The woman must be operated on. In surgery, the doctors remove not only the lesion itself but also to the ninth vertebra, where she is sitting. Then, you build the spine at this point.
The removed tissue is send for analysis in the pathology. The diagnosis is established after some Tests: It is a so-called cystic Echinococcosis – tapeworm larvae are for the complaints officer. The parasites have been displaced by growth of the surrounding tissue, with time, has formed a kind of capsule. By means of a genome-determination, the Doctors can also tell which is the tape worm it is: the so-called dog tape worm, Echinococcus granulosus.
Echinococcus granulosus, the dog tapeworm, is only four to seven millimeters in size
For safety, the patient receives an anti-worm agent, if other larvae are in your body. The therapy is successful. In the case of a control date, after nine months, she is fully recovered.
Rare manifestation of a rare disease
In industrial Nations, dog tapeworm infections in humans are very rare. In Germany there are per year, about 60 to 120 cases of cystic Echinococcosis. Usually, the worms are transferred, as the Name suggests, from infected dogs, the tapeworm eggs are eliminated with your feces. Rarely, cats can be infested, notify the Robert Koch Institute. In addition, cattle, sheep, and other ruminants are intermediate hosts can be the parasitic worms. Which animal is the patient infected, in retrospect, is not clear.
The larvae enter the human body, to settle in about 70 percent of the cases in the liver, in addition, 20 percent of them affect the lungs. That you, such as Hiking in the French patient, the spine, is rare.
