A man in London has been treated for tapeworm in the brain, it has been reported.
It took four years to identify that the parasite had found its way to the man’s brain, according to a report in Genome Biology.
Eventually doctors at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, identified it after taking biopsies of brain tissue.
The patient is reported to be aged 50 and of Chinese origin.
The tapeworm Spirometra erinaceieuropaei is reported to be rarely found in humans, leading to British scientists deciding to sequence its genome to learn more about it.
One source of infection is thought to be raw frog poultice, a Chinese remedy for the eyes.
Doctors found the worm had travelled 5cm through the man’s brain.
The patient was successfully treated and has recovered.
The research showed the species of worm has a genome ten times larger than other known tapeworms – and one third the size of the human genome.
Researcher Dr Effrossyni Gkrania-Klotsas, from Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, said: “We did not expect to see an infection of this kind in the UK, but global travel means that unfamiliar parasites do sometimes appear
“We can now diagnose sparganosis using MRI scans, but this does not give us the information we need to identify the exact tapeworm species and its vulnerabilities. Our work shows that, even with only tiny amounts of DNA from clinical samples, we can find out all we need to identify and characterise the parasite."
Researcher Dr Matt Berriman, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, added: “The genome sequence suggests that the parasite is naturally resistant to albendazole – an existing anti-tapeworm drug.
"However, many new drug targets that are being explored for other tapeworms are present in this parasite and could offer future clinical possibilities.”
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