A 19-year-old Australian boy fell into a coma for over a year and is now paralyzed from the neck down, after betting on swallowing a garden slug. The slug carried a parasite, Angiostrongylus cantonensis, which commonly infects rats but also slugs and snails that eat rodent feces.
This parasite caused a serious form of meningitis, eosinophilic meningitis, and after 420 days in a coma, the young man woke up completely paralyzed explains the Australian site news.com.au.
Now 28, Sam Ballard is suffering from seizures and needs to be under 24-hour supervision.
A known infection that is not always so serious
The rat parasitic worm lives in the pulmonary arteries of rodents where they lay eggs which develop into larvae. The infection spreads when the rat expels the parasites in its excrement, which will be ingested by various animals, such as snails, frogs, crabs, slugs… It is enough for the contaminated animals to be touched or eaten for the worm to parasitize settles in the body of man.
In most cases, the infection mainly causes fever and nausea, and the parasite is easily eliminated. But in some cases, like this young Australian, it migrates to the brain and nervous system, causing serious infection of the meninges and potentially death.
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