Boy's twitch turned out to be parasite in brain

Pic shows: Doctors extract the parasite from Xiao Fei’s brain. A boy in China has had a 7.5-centimetre (3-inch) parasite removed from his brain after he began experiencing involuntary twitching on his face. Doctors said the boy’s habit of drinking unboiled water was to blame. The schoolboy known as Xiao Fei, aged 10, is said to have been sitting in his fourth-grade classroom recently when his teacher noticed the switching on his face. The boy had been staying with his elderly relatives in a Ji’an City village, in East China’s Jiangxi Province, while his parents worked in southern China, reports said. The worried teacher rushed Xiao Fei to a local hospital, which considered his condition too serious and which transferred him to a hospital in Jiangxi’s provincial capital Nanchang City. Xiao Fei’s parents joined him in Nanchang, where doctors diagnosed him with a parasitic infection and prescribed him with antiparasitic drugs for three weeks. His symptoms of twitching once every two or three days was brought under control and he was eventually allowed to return home. But reports said Xiao Fei’s condition worsened, sometimes causing him to twitch 20 times a day. The boy’s mother, surnamed Zuo, then took him to the city of Guangzhou, capital of South China’s Guangdong Province, where she worked, and he was admitted to the Guangdong 999 Brain Hospital. Doctor Wu Jie of the hospital in Guangzhou found that the parasitic worm had made its way into Xiao Fei’s brain, and an operation was performed to have it removed, with the child expected to make a full recovery. Doctor Wu noted that the parasite most likely entered Xiao Fei’s body through unboiled and unsanitary water often drunk in rural villagers. He warned that, besides water, parasites can also be found in uncooked meat. (ends) (CEN)