An 18-year-old from India checked into the emergency room complaining about a sharp and sudden pain in his groin. The young man, who had also suffered seizures, arrived at the hospital in a dazed and confused state with swelling over his eye. His case was published in a recent study by the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Doctors immediately treated him. Scans and tests confirmed the presence of lesions in his brain and cysts in his right eye and groin.
Despite the medical team's tireless efforts to save his life, the unnamed teen died from his illness two weeks later.
So what actually caused all this?
Doctors had diagnosed the young man with neurocysticercosis, which is a parasitic infection of the central nervous system. He had parasites in his brain; the cysts that doctors initially detected were actually larval cysts formed by tapeworm eggs that had spread throughout his brain and into other parts of his body.
Neurocysticercosis is a preventable infection that occurs when someone consumes a tapeworm while eating undercooked food — and one type of food in particular, as you'll see in the video below. Now this tragic story is being used as a cautionary tale for meat-eaters everywhere.
