“I Keep Seeing Animals That Aren’t There”: Woman in Her 50s Suffers Hallucinations for 4 Months—Shocking Discovery in Her Brain

[Financial News]  A 52-year-old woman had been suffering from unexplained headaches and hallucinations for four months. When her brain was examined, a shocking intruder was found to have taken up residence. The culprit behind symptoms thought to be a mental illness was none other than pork tapeworm larvae that had burrowed into her brain.
On the 10th (local time), the U.S. medical journal the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) reported a remarkable case of a rare infection in a woman in her 50s living in the Philippines.
For four months, the woman experienced visual hallucinations in which people and animals that did not exist appeared before her eyes. Her symptoms worsened over time. Although she seemed to be speaking, what she said made no sense, and she also developed severe cognitive and language impairments, leaving her unable to understand others or follow even simple instructions.
The medical team initially suspected a psychiatric disorder, but, noting her severe language impairment, immediately conducted a detailed brain scan (MRI). The results were shocking: multiple cystic lesions (sacs) containing parasitic larvae were found throughout her brain. Clearly visible inside the cysts were scoleces, the head-like parts of the pork tapeworm larvae.
The final diagnosis was neurocysticercosis, a parasitic infection. After pork tapeworm eggs entered her body and hatched, the larvae traveled through her bloodstream and penetrated the central nervous system, including the brain and spinal cord, where they took hold. The brain lesions caused by the parasites triggered abnormal electrical signals in the brain (seizures), which in turn produced the bizarre hallucinations. In other words, they were not simply psychological symptoms but physical warning signals from a brain being damaged.
Because of the name “pork tapeworm,” people may easily assume that eating undercooked pork causes parasites to develop in the brain. But the actual route of infection is different. Neurocysticercosis occurs when parasite “eggs” passed in an infected person’s feces enter someone else’s mouth through contaminated water or food. In other words, people can become infected even if they have never eaten pork.
Fortunately, the woman’s condition improved after she received immediate antiparasitic medication alongside treatment to control her seizures. Within a month of treatment, her headaches and hallucinations had completely disappeared, and brain imaging also showed that the cysts had shrunk substantially.
Experts warn that anyone with persistent headaches of unknown cause accompanied by hallucinations, seizures or language impairment should promptly undergo a neurological examination of the brain. The source of the hallucinations that tormented this woman for four months was no figment of her imagination, but the chilling mischief of parasites gnawing away at her brain.

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