Eating undercooked meat can lead to tapeworm

The main points of this paper are as follows:

  • Pork tapeworm and beef tapeworm are the most common human intestinal tapeworms. They are tapeworms, milky white, flattened and long, hence the name Taenia solium or Taenia saginata.
  • Beef tapeworm can only parasitic in the human intestinal tract, if people are infected, only digestive tract symptoms will occur. But pork tapeworm not only can be parasitic in the human intestinal tract, its larvae can also infect more human organs, often damage a wide range of sites, resulting in serious illness.
  • Preventing tapeworm requires you to stay away from cows and pigs and not eat undercooked meat.
  • It is suggested that the netizens who are suspected to be ill should first choose the local CDC to seek professional help from the department of parasitic diseases, and secondly they can choose the department of digestive medicine or the department of infectious diseases in a comprehensive hospital.
Many people eat a lot of undercooked meat when they eat hot pot.

What’s a tapeworm?

Tapeworms are invertebrates. They are tapeworms. The larva of tapeworm is called cysticercus, the adult or larva of tapeworm can be widely parasitic in human, domestic animal, poultry, fish and other economic animals, which can cause various kinds of tapeworm and cysticercosis.


Tapeworms have unimaginable lengths


Pork tapeworm is 2-4 meters long, beef tapeworm is 4-8 meters long, the longest can be up to 25 meters.

The tapeworm has a sucker on its head that can be attached to the wall of the human intestines; the neck has the ability to regenerate, growing 7 to 8 segments a day; each mature segment contains more than 100, 000 eggs; the tapeworm has no digestive tract. Rely on the villi of the body surface to absorb enteral nutrition for their own needs.

The common feature of pork tapeworms and beef tapeworms is that they both have suckers, but the difference is that there are small hooks on the head of the pork tapeworm, but not on the beef tapeworm.

Pork tapeworms are more harmful than beef tapeworms. 

Because the tapeworm segment can automatically detach itself from the worm body, patients often have the segments of the tapeworm excreted along with the stool. 

Beef tapeworm because of strong activity, so there will be a single segment or several nodes connected to be expelled from the state, when not defecate may also overflow, scattered in the patient’s underwear or bedding.

Life history of Taenia solium

Because tapeworm parasitizes in intestinal tract, can cause a patient upper and middle abdomen ache, ache is very acuteness sometimes, but after taking food, ache majority can alleviate. 

A small number of patients have nausea, diarrhea and constipation. 

Tapeworm starts at the beginning to make a person appetite hypersensitive, but ill for a long time can make a person inappetence, appear emaciation, feeble and dizzy wait for a symptom. 

If the harm, beef tapeworm activity although strong, but the impact is still limited. Because its larvae can spread in the body of cattle, people are its ultimate host, for people, can only parasitic in the intestinal tract. 

In other words, if a person infected with beef tapeworm, only digestive symptoms will appear, beef tapeworm scramble for nutrition, not secondary cause other harm. 

But the pork tapeworm is not necessarily, the human is not only its ultimate host (the intestinal parasitic tapeworm), but also its intermediate host (the larva of the pork tapeworm, cysticercus cellulosae can also parasitic in the human body). 

In addition, the adult tapeworm pork, although only parasitic in the human intestinal tract, but it has a small hook on the head, can hook the intestinal wall, often cause more damage to people. 

Its larvae (cysticercosis) can also enter the blood vessels through the intestinal wall, with the blood flow spread to the far end, parasitic in the human muscle, eyes and brain, so once infected, usually deep infection, damage to a wide range of areas, the disease is serious.

How did tapeworms become infected?

There are several ways in which people can be infected with tapeworm as follows:

Non-epidemic areas:

It is mainly caused by accidental consumption of raw or semi-raw pork or beef containing live tapeworm larvae.

For example, the cooking time is too short, and the cooking time is too short. In short, the live tapeworm larvae are not killed by the high temperature, and are eaten directly, or indirectly contaminate other food.

Endemic areas:

Tibetans in Tibet like to eat dried beef raw, or chunks of beef roasted slightly over the fire. The Miao and Dong ethnic groups in Guizhou, Guangxi and Hunan like to eat “red meat” and “salted meat,” and the Dai people in Yunnan like to eat “raw pork.” all of them use raw beef cut or chopped to be seasoned and eaten raw. There are also some areas have the habit of eating raw pork and so on.

These meat-eating methods do not guarantee that the live tapeworm larvae are killed, and all pose a risk of tapeworm infection.

As a result of the above bad habits, humans will allow the original parasitic on pigs or cattle tapeworm larvae can take advantage of.

After entering the human body, the tapeworm larvae are stimulated by bile in the small intestine, the cephalic ganglion is turned out from the capsule, attached to the intestinal wall and gradually elongated, the neck gradually splits and forms chainlike body segments, which can develop into adults in about 2-3 months.

Tapeworms are mostly parasitic only one in the human body.

How to prevent tapeworm?

Now that the route of infection is known, it is easy to prevent tapeworm. Just stick to the following hygiene habits:

  • Active treatment of tapeworm patients, to avoid patients become the source of infection.
  • The sale of pork and beef containing tapeworm larvae is prohibited.
  • Advocate raising pigs and cattle in captivity, and stay away from toilets.
  • Develop good food hygiene habits: change the habit of eating pigs and beef raw; cook the meat until cooked, the tapeworm larvae in the meat at 54 ℃ temperature, 5 minutes can be killed. Or at -12 ℃ ~ -13 ℃, after 12 hours, all the tapeworm larvae can be killed.
  • Do not eat pork from unknown source.

What if you suspect you’ve got tapeworm?

If somebody suspects him to get tapeworm disease, should notice whether discharged along with defecate tapeworm section piece, protect good specimen, in order to send to examine diagnose.

If you expel a slice, you can soak the specimen in normal saline or 70% alcohol, both of which are readily available in pharmacies.

In short, to observe under the laboratory microscope tapeworm head there is no hook in order to diagnose, only by the stool in the tapeworm eggs, can not distinguish between tapeworm or beef tapeworm.

Moreover, due to changes in hygiene conditions, parasitic diseases have changed from being “common” more than a decade ago to being “rare.” many clinicians have only studied them in textbooks and have no practical experience in diagnosing and treating the disease.

With the improvement of living standards, parasitic diseases are indeed rare. As long as you stick to the habit of not eating raw meat and doing it raw and cooked, you don’t have to worry about being infected with tapeworm.

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