Rare Tapeworm Found Inside Toddler After Eating Raw Fish

A three-year-old boy has been treated after doctors discovered a tapeworm growing inside him that is considered to be never before found in humans in Australia.

Murdoch University parasitologists, who identified the species of the worm, confirmed on Thursday that the boy, from Eyre Peninsula near Port Lincoln in South Australia, was infected with a Pacific Broad Tapeworm last year after regularly eating raw fish caught by his father.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the boy was taken to a medical clinic by his parents on July 29, 2015, after having a poor appetite and diarrhoea for one month.

His parents said they also noticed tapeworm organisms in his faeces. They said that the boy has never traveled overseas, but had often eaten the spoils of his father’s fishing trips, including southern bluefin tuna, spotted sillago and southern goatfish.

He was treated last year and has made a full recovery.

Professor of Parasitology Andrew Thompson said on the university’s website that the pathogenic tapeworm, which can grow up to 12 metres, is most commonly found in fish-eating mammals, like bears and seals in the northern hemisphere, but not people in Australia, although more cases can be expected.

“While symptoms are generally mild, and were not significant for this patient, our findings and reports from the last 90 years suggest these tapeworms are endemic in fish-eating mammals found off the Australian coast, and more human cases can be expected.

“People who eat fresh, raw marine fish are most at risk,” he said.

The US national Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health said that it is possible to be infected with the tapeworm by eating sushi and sashimi, suggesting that marketers should consider “affixing labels to the packaging, assuring consumers that proper preparations have been completed to minimize risks of fish tapeworm”, or diphyllobothriasis — the disease associated with Pacific Broad Tapeworms.

Diphyllobothriasis can cause diarrhoea, vomiting and B-12 anaemia because the tapeworm consumes about 80 percent of a person’s B-12 intake.

Mr Thompson said climate change could be responsible for the tapeworm’s presence in Australia. “It is possible that temperate water currents off southern Australia are changing thus affecting the distribution of the fish hosts of the parasite,” he said.

Source: Dailymail.co.uk