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A tapeworm is a parasitic organism that lives in hosts like pets, farm animals, and humans. Making up the class Cestoda, tapeworms are long, segmented worms of different species with a complicated reproductive cycle. A tapeworm infestation often has minimal symptoms, but a person can develop serious health problems if it goes untreated.
A tapeworm has a head, called the scolex, with a mouth of hooked appendages that allow it to attach to its host's intestinal lining. Right behind the head, the neck grows the segments that make up the rest of the elongated worm. A healthy, mature tapeworm can reach 20 ft (6.1 m) in a large host, winding down its small intestine. The end or tail segments break off and are passed with excrement.
In its adult phase, tapeworm absorbs nutrients from its primary host, which could be a dog, cat, cow, sheep, human, or other. To reproduce, the tapeworm can fertilize its own eggs (in some species) and release them to be excreted with the host's stool. In the secondary phase, an intermediary host ingests these eggs, and they get embedded in muscles or organs. When the intermediary host, such as a cow, gets eaten by another primary host, the eggs begin to develop into new tapeworms.
Tapeworm is frequently picked up by swimming in a body of water, like a lake or river, and accidentally swallowing a small amount of water. However, one can also be infected by eating undercooked meat, such as beef, pork, or fish, or by getting bitten by a flea from an infected pet. Humans with tapeworm have subtle or nonexistent symptoms. These include weight loss, hunger, indigestion, weakness, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, or anemia. If the tapeworm has spread, using you as an intermediate host, and embedded eggs in vital organs, your liver, lungs, heart, and brain can be affected.
Your family doctor can diagnose a tapeworm infestation by examining a stool sample for segments or eggs from a worm that has used you as their primary host. However, if the human is acting as secondary host, and cysts have formed in organs, a doctor may need to conduct a CT or ultrasound scan. Treatment of a tapeworm infestation relies on medicine, but cysts need to be surgically removed.
Sometimes tapeworms cause signs and symptoms such as:
nausea
weakness
diarrhea
abdominal pain
hunger or loss of appetite
fatigue
weight loss
vitamin and mineral deficiencies
However, often having tapeworms does not cause symptoms. The only sign of tapeworm infection may be segments of the worms, possibly moving, in a bowel movement.
In rare cases, tapeworms can lead to serious complications, including blocking the intestine. If pork tapeworm larvae move out of the intestine, they can migrate to other parts of the body and cause damage to the liver, eyes, heart, and brain. These infections can be life-threatening.
If you suspect you have tapeworms, you should see your doctor. Because there are different types of worms and tapeworms that can infect people, diagnosing a tapeworm infection may require a stool sample to identify the type of worm.
If worms are not detected in the stool, your doctor may order a blood test to check for antibodies produced to fight tapeworm infection. For serious cases, your doctor may use imaging tests such as computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to check for damage outside the digestive tract.
The type and length of treatment may depend on the type of tapeworm you have. Tapeworms are usually treated with a single dose of medicine taken by mouth. Commonly used medicines for tapeworms are praziquantel (Biltricide) and albendazole (Albenza).
These medications kill the tapeworms. The dead tapeworms then dissolve or pass from your body with bowel movements. If worms are large, you may have cramping when they pass. Your doctor will recheck stool samples at one and three months after you finish treatment. When tapeworms are confined to the intestines, appropriate treatment gets rid of them in more than 95% of people.
More serious complications of tapeworm infection are also treated with medications.
Since tapeworms prevent the aborption of food, and also medication, the most common course of treatment for tapeworms must attack the worms directly. Your doctor will usually prescribe one of several anthelmintics (parasite-expelling drugs), which are toxic to the worms. These medications kill and dissolve the bodies of adult tapeworms, but do not exterminate larvae, so it is key to avoid reinfection.
Doctors often recommend a gentle laxative to ease the passing of the tapeworms, but because tapeworms attach themselves with barbed hooks to the inside of your intestinal walls, laxatives are not usually an effective treatment by themselves, contrary to proponents of colon cleansing.
If you have an invasive infection including cysts, anti-inflammatory drugs such as steroids may be used to reduce swelling. In extreme cases, where cysts are life-threatening, surgery may be necessary.
While the word "parasite" is a scary one, there is not usually a need for excessive concern where tapeworms are concerned, unless they have gone undetected for long periods of time. In people who receive appropriate treatment, over 95% are successfully rid of all eggs, larvae, and adult worms.