Neurocysticercosis in immigrant populations

Abstract

Taenia solium, the pork tapeworm, is endemic in most developing countries. The adult tapeworm only lives in the small intestine of humans, who get infected eating poorly cooked pork with cystic larvae. Tapeworm carriers expel microscopic tapeworm eggs and occasionally tapeworm segments with the stools. In areas with poor sanitation, pigs ingest stools from the environment and become infected with larvae.1 Humans can also get infected with cysticercosis by fecal‐oral contamination, clustering around the houses where a tapeworm carrier lives. In this issue, O’Neal and colleagues report two cases of neurocysticercosis in a family of refugees from Burma who moved to a refugee camp in Thailand and then to the United States.2 In this report, the occurrence of multiple cases in a family demonstrates the focal nature of cysticercosis transmission, suggesting that the detection of a confirmed cysticercosis case should prompt the evaluation of other household members for both symptomatic cysticercosis and intestinal taeniasis. It also adds to reports from other countries published in the journal and elsewhere (including a case report in an immigrant from Laos 3 and a series of neurocysticercosis cases in Israeli travelers 4 ), reflecting the wide areas of endemicity of the disease.