CARDIFF: A Welsh woman has revealed how a three-month trip to India left her with 38 parasites in her brain, causing severe headaches, seizures and psychosis before she finally recovered after years of treatment, according to a BBC Wales report.
Lowri Denman, 42, from Carmarthen, first realised something was wrong when she discovered a metre-long tapeworm after going to the toilet. She had travelled around India in 2007 and later developed neurocysticercosis, a rare brain infection caused by the larvae of the pork tapeworm.
Her consultant, Dr Brendan Healy, believes she picked up the infection during the trip, possibly after unknowingly consuming food contaminated with microscopic tapeworm eggs.
The first visible sign appeared in 2010, when Denman found the tapeworm. Initial stool tests came back clear, and she continued with normal life. Within a year, however, she began suffering severe headaches and later had her first seizure.
Scans revealed 38 parasites in her brain. Doctors initially suspected toxoplasmosis, but further investigations confirmed neurocysticercosis.
Denman was treated with anti-parasitic drugs and steroids and later experienced several years of good health. But her condition worsened again when she collapsed at work. Scans showed swelling around the parasites in her brain.
She later suffered confusion, numbness, severe anxiety, panic attacks and psychosis, eventually spending six weeks in a neuropsychiatric hospital.
Dr Healy described her as a “once-in-a-career patient”, saying her case had been discussed by experts in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The parasites have now calcified, and Denman has not had a seizure since 2017, though she will remain on epilepsy medication for life.
