Brain Parasites, California’s Hidden Health Problem

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/09/06/tapeworm-in-her-brain/

by georgecmu • 14 years ago

95 54 14 years ago

blogs.scientificamerican.com

all other things aside, that $66K tag can send 95% to see a bankruptcy lawyer.

dmix• 14 years ago

"The most common form of payment is Medicaid, a tax-funded public service. In Los Angeles County, the economic impact is even more pronounced, costing $66,000 on average, the increase likely due to the high cost of health care in the state, says Frank Sorvillo, a University of Los Angeles professor of epidemiology."

onetimeuse0015• 14 years ago

not everyone has Medicaid, usually the lower middle class gets hosed (too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but barely making ends meet.)

Now that you mentioned it, they probably they charge individuals well over $100K if Medicaid pays $66k

mbreese• 14 years ago

Thanks... and now I have something else to be paranoid about.

jtheory• 14 years ago

Your risk isn't far off from your risk of getting struck by lightning, and a tiny fraction of the risk you'll get in a car crash.

There's no limit of the ills that might befall you, if you're willing to dip that low (honestly, I've no idea why the article is written as if this is a big deal); so you can save your paranoia for something a bit higher up the scale. :)

pfedor• 14 years ago

The CDC says an estimated 1,900 people are diagnosed with neurocysticercosis within the United States yearly.

In other words, on the same order as the number of people who die from cancer per day in the US. I guess I'm going to continue to be more worried about other health problems.

maxerickson3• 14 years ago

Whether you choose to worry about it or not, California might be able to save an awful lot of money with interventions that avoid a $66,000 surgery.

yummyfajitas3• 14 years ago

Or they might not. According to the article, the early treatment is "hundreds of dollars" - for simplicity I'll assume it's $660. If we apply early treatment to 100 people for every surgery prevented, we merely break even.

Early treatment and disease screening is not a panacea. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it's more harmful than doing nothing.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

Also worth pointing out this is one cheaply preventable dangerous medical treatment.

If people start going to doctors before they get sick, we

a) save a huge amount of money

b) create an incentive to advance preventive, low-cost medicine

c) get a better understanding of how medical conditions evolve within the community

All three are worthy goals (and b may even spur a very profitable industry)

SlipperySlope3• 14 years ago

This parasite can be eradicated worldwide. We need pigs to be penned where they cannot eat human feces - its that simple.

Who else thinks that if the Hebrews had figured that out long ago, then Hebrew and Muslim diet restrictions might today be more permissive?

onetimeuse0015• 14 years ago

This parasite can be eradicated worldwide. We need pigs to be penned where they cannot eat human feces - its that simple.

Not simple at all. A trip outside the first world will tell you that raising pigs is not as easy as you make it. Not every family has land and resources avail to raise pigs as you said it.

SlipperySlope3• 14 years ago

Perhaps the goal is simply stated, but the solutions are complex. The main resource lacking is education about proper pig husbandry.

See: http://cnia.inta.gov.ar/helminto/A%20Cisticercosis/Improving...

johnchristopher2• 14 years ago

Moreoever pigs are in direct competition with humans for food. That's almost certaily why ancestral middle-eastern tribes had taboo on raising pigs and favoured goose and cows that feed on herbs (humans and pigs can't digest grass wich is based on azot).

raverbashing3• 14 years ago

Yes, but not only that

Vegetables should be properly cleaned before eating

If you eat contaminated pork, you won't get NCC (or other cysticercosis) , you get a worm.

You get Cysticercosis when you eat food contaminated with human faeces (sorry about that). Because then the human is "playing the part" of the pig.

Cooking and basic hygiene goes a long way.

rorrr2• 14 years ago

> If you eat contaminated pork, you won't get NCC (or other cysticercosis)

You are wrong

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysticercosis

vectorbunny4• 14 years ago

I think Hebrew dietary restrictions may be more instructively viewed as a mechanism to enforce group cohesion than as a primer on suggested health practices. It is difficult to mix with other groups when you cannot eat with them. Matrilineal line of descent serves the same function. Children fathered by in-group men with women outside the group are simply excluded, while in-group women face censure for the same behavior. There are structural reasons why Jewish culture has remained distinct in diaspora, while many other disjoint populations are absorbed by host populations over time.

gojomo• 14 years ago

Longstanding practices are often multiply-determined, and the relative balance of benefits may change according to the situation. (In high-sanitation environments, the rules help enforce cohesion/segregation; in low-sanitation environments, the rules provide protection from endemic parasites.)

trhtrsh• 14 years ago

Why forbid pigs, and not cows? Why catfish, not cod? Vulture, not chicken? Even within a framework, there are reasons for specific decisions.

bryanlarsen• 14 years ago

Pork production in the United States is monitored and tapeworm free. You're much safer eating American pork than you are eating fish.

As noted in the article, the discussion is about human to human spread of this parasite. The solution there is even simpler, though more difficult: wash your hands regularly and thoroughly.

vectorbunny4• 14 years ago

Agreed. Sanitation practices that seem obvious in the developed world assume infrastructure not available in many other areas. People who live in these places are not stupid, and I, for one, am glad that my morning ritual doesn't involve hauling fresh water from a mile away.

kevindication• 14 years ago

And even more importantly, wash your hands regularly and thoroughly when you are preparing food for others.

nivertech3• 14 years ago

This was figured not by Hebrews (ancient Israelites), but by ancient Egyptians.

Cysticercosis was endemic in ancient Egypt. Pork was a staple food for common people in Egypt, but priests had strict dietary laws and they knew that Cysticercosis caused by tapeworms from swine.

Ancient Israelites just adopted a lot of customs from Egyptian Priestly caste, like circumcision, calendar and dietary laws. Not surprising, considering Moses was raised as Egyptian.

iskander3• 14 years ago

>...priests had strict dietary laws and they knew that Cysticercosis caused by tapeworms from swine.

> Ancient Israelites just adopted a lot of customs from Egyptian Priestly caste...Not surprising, considering Moses was raised as Egyptian.

Even allowing the existence of Moses (which, if we're feeling skeptical we can reinterpret as the long cultural shadow of Egypt), this still seems like a "just so" story.

Do you know if there's any evidence that Egyptian priests actually had medical justifications for their taboos? Similarly, how do we know that ancient Israelites adopted certain beliefs due to direct Egyptian influence, rather than participating in widespread regional practices also found in the Canaanite populations from which they emerged?

Tichy• 14 years ago

I was half expecting an article about startup fever.

david_shaw• 14 years ago

Not directly related to the article, but it seems pretty risky (and potentially not HIPAA compliant) to release photographs of software with protected health information on them.[1]

I do a lot of work with security in the healthcare field, and I'm pretty sure it's a big no-no to release information like that. Where it gets interesting is that I'm confident that the patient herself okayed the information... so where does that leave responsibility for the PHI?

I don't actually know the answer, but I'd certainly be interested in finding out.

[1] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/files/2012/09...

maxerickson3• 14 years ago

Cursory googling suggests it is fine. E.g.:

http://www.rtnda.org/pages/media_items/rtndas-guide-to-healt...

jgrahamc• 14 years ago

One prominent (at least in this community) sufferer of this is Sarah Lane (of TechTV and TWiT).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Lane#Personal_life

"On October 11, 2009, Lane was at a Los Angeles restaurant with a friend when she experienced a severe tonic–clonic seizure, went into spasms and blacked out. It was apparently her first such seizure. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she apparently stayed for a couple of days before being diagnosed with a lesion on her brain and eventually put on anti-seizure medications and discharged. Lane wrote on her blog that further diagnosis revealed that neurocysticercosis tumors have developed as a result of her contracting cysticercosis."

http://www.sarahlane.com/blog/2009/11/1/sarah-the-goddess-of...

speg• 14 years ago

IIRC, she also spent a year traveling the world before this happened. I think I remember her saying she picked up the parasite abroad.

jfb• 14 years ago

Adds to the list of things I won't miss about California.

iProject• 14 years ago

Actually, in the details of the story you find that you can "enjoy" the infection elsewhere...

"Only five states — New York, California, Texas, Oregon and Illinois — report the disease, and the data is inconsistent. Oftentimes, departments rely on each other to deal with paperwork, and the numbers are never recorded, Smith says. As a result, not much is known about tapeworm outbreaks in the U.S. — or the parasites themselves."

It also sounds as though the long dormancy of the symptoms make it extremely difficult to determine where it was contracted.

Brain Parasites, California’s Hidden Health Problem

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