Taenia solium

Dear Mom and Dad,

I know I’ve always said I would go continue school to become a physician’s assistant, but some opportunities in life you just can’t pass up. I’ve decided to do research in Japan on a tapeworm called Taenia solium. It is in the class Cestoda and is transmitted by eating undercooked pork in poor sanitary conditions (Yanagida et al., 2012). It is fascinating to me because this tapeworm causes taeniasis, an intestinal infection and cysticercosis, the infection of various tissues in the body of humans (Yanagida et al., 2012). This is an extremely dangerous, growing problem in the world that is not being researched enough. 

T. solium is the main source of cysticercosis, an infection of humans of the larval stage of T. solium. Humans contract this by accidentally ingesting T. solium eggs from the feces of a human T. solium carrier. This means it is possible to contract cysticercosis in locations without pigs as a reservoir host.  Cysticerci progress in various organs, commonly in brain and eye tissues (Yanagida et al., 2012). T. solium can be found worldwide and research needs to be done.

For this research I would similarly replicate Yangida’s experiment and look back at the cases of T. solium reported in the last 17 years in Japan. I would also study the next 3 cases reported from now. The new cases in the study would be diagnosed using neuroimaging. We would confirm them using ELISA, the enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. This will detect the human antibodies of the parasite (Yanagida et al., 2012). This would give me enough data to prove that T. solium should be included on Japans list of infection diseases. It is a more harmful and dangerous tapeworm than we know. I will write you soon with progress of my research. In the meantime, please have MOM cook all the meat in the house; I know how she tends to cook everything WELL DONE.

With love

Tara

Yanagida T., Sako Y., Nakao M., Nakaya K., A. Ito, 2012. Taeniasis and cysticercosis due to Taenia solium in Japan.  Parasites & Vectors 5:18.

Pechenik, Jan. A Short Guide to Writing About Biology. 7^th: Longman: Pearson Education Inc., 2010. 71-81, 146-7, 157-162, 162-191, 194-201, 201-207