Worm lived in Chinese man's brain for 30 years, causing headaches and seizures

A man in Jiangxi, China, endured painful headaches and seizures for 30 years before recently discovering the real problem — a 10cm long worm living in his brain.

The parasite had caused lesions in the 59-year-old's brain, resulting in surges of electrical activity that triggered his symptoms, reported Southern Metropolis Daily.

The man, known only as Zhang, began a long and arduous battle to find a cure for his health issues after his first seizure in 1989.

Zhang was playing a card game when his arms and legs suddenly began to twitch. He started foaming at the mouth and lost consciousness.

His family rushed him to the local hospital where he was diagnosed with epilepsy and prescribed anti-epileptic drugs.

Despite taking his medicine regularly, he still suffered from occasional small attacks as well as regular headaches and fainting spells, according to Pear Video.

Thinking that the episodes were not a big issue, Zhang continued to brush them off until he had a close shave with death in 2015. His village caught fire and he was in the midst of fighting the blaze when he suffered a huge seizure.

Since the fire, Zhang's symptoms went from bad to worse and he began to experience severe seizures every month.

Desperate to solve his health issues, he visited many hospitals, only to receive the same diagnosis — until last month.

Doctors eventually found that Zhang had a parasite in his brain after a cranial MRI revealed lesions in his right frontal lobe and a blood test indicated the presence of parasites in his body.

Wu Jie, director of Guangdong 999 Brain Hospital's neurology department, said that his team recently performed a right frontal lobe resection on Zhang and successfully removed a 10cm long parasitic worm from his brain.

According to Wu, it is likely that the worm entered Zhang's body when he drank untreated stream water.

Besides hitching a ride on unclean food and water, parasites can also get under our skin, as a woman from Malaysia found out after walking barefoot on a beach.

kimberlylim@asiaone.com