It was a team of doctors from Portugal who raised the alert in the British medical journal. They admitted a man to Lisbon hospital who had suffered from severe abdominal pain, vomiting and fever for a week. An endoscopy revealed the cause of these symptoms: white larvae on a wall of the intestine. After removing the larvae, the patient was quickly recovered.
The disease can cause anaphylactic shock
These tiny larvae, known as anisakis, are parasitic worms that infect some raw fish. When ingested by humans, they can attach to the lining of the digestive tract and cause a parasitic disease called anisakiasis, causing vomiting and severe abdominal pain. In some (rarer) cases it can even cause intestinal obstruction or anaphylactic shock.
This disease is well known to doctors in Japan (there are 2,500 cases there each year) and Scandinavia, due to the consumption of cod liver. But our recent craze for sushi leads to an increase in cases in Europe.
Portuguese doctors therefore call for vigilance and recommend that all types of fish that can be eaten raw be frozen first to kill the parasites. There is indeed no effective pharmacological treatment to kill the larvae once consumed. The only effective treatment is to remove the larvae either by endoscopy or by surgery.
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