PEOPLE EAT CENTIPEDES, GET RAT LUNGWORM LARVAE

A 78-year-old woman and her 46-year-old son in Guangzhou, China, were admitted to a hospital, weeks apart, with similar symptoms: headaches, stiff neck, sleepiness, cognitive impairment, and other neurological symptoms. Doctors suspected possible meningitis. Scans showed two suspicious spots in the woman’s brain, and one nodule in the man’s right lung. Then, doctors figured out the problem: both had eaten raw centipedes from the same market. To confirm that it could have been the centipedes, the researchers purchased 20 of them from the same market where the two patients had gotten theirs. They found rat lungworm larvae in seven of the specimens – an average of 56 larvae per centipede. The parasite can fully mature in some animals, but not humans. So when it gets in a human, it can get lost, and go to the brain, and it will stay there. The patients recovered well after 15 days of treatment, which included an antiparasitic drug and a steroid.
* Rat lungworm larvae. Those are three words you never want to hear in any combination.
* You know how they say in the future we’ll be eating insects? Meh – not so much.
* Wait – maybe the cognitive impairment came first. That would explain thinking eating raw centipedes would be good.
* On the bright side, we’ve got something for a new episode of “Monsters Inside Me”.
* I know an old woman who swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die.