According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a number of family members who shared a dinner of bear meat gathered earlier became afflicted with brain worms.
In July 2022, the Minnesota Department of Health received notification of a 29-year-old male’s multiple hospitalizations over a two-and-a-half-week period due to symptoms including fever, severe muscle stiffness, edema around the eyes, and other ailments.
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The man told doctors after his second hospitalization that he had attended a family gathering in South Dakota days earlier, where one of the meals included kabobs made from black bear meat “harvested by one of the family members in northern Saskatchewan.”
Before thawing it for supper, the meat had been in the freezer for a month and a half. The CDC reports that the deeper hue of the beef led to its initial serving as raUpon tasting the kabobs, family members discovered the meat was underdone, prompting them to recook and serve it.ed.
Nine family members, mostly from Minnesota but some from South Dakota and Arizona, ate the lunch, but some only ate the veggies that had been cooked and served alongside the bear meat.
Doctors eventually diagnosed the 29-year-old guy with trichinellosis, a roundworm that is unusual in humans and typically acquired through the ingestion of wild animals. Once within a human host, the larvae can migrate through muscle tissue and organs, including the brain.
These freeze-resistant worms infected five other family members, including a 12-year-old girl and two others who had just eaten the vegetables at lunch. Albendazole, according to the Mayo Clinic, prevents the worms from absorbing sugar, causing them to lose energy and eventually die, leading to the hospitalization and treatment of three family members.
The CDC suggested that the only sure way to kill trichinella parasites is to thoroughly boil the meat in which they live to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and emphasized that it can cross-contaminate other meals.
The CDC estimates that trichinella parasites affect up to 25% of black bears in Canada and Alaska, though estimates vary.
Brain worms gained public attention earlier this year when presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed that a parasitic worm he contracted years ago “ate a portion” of his brain, perhaps causing cognitive difficulties.
Nausea, vomiting, headaches, and seizures are symptoms of a brain worm infection, according to Dr. Cรฉline Gounder of “CBS Mornings.” Some people who get worms may have no symptoms at all. Gounder clarified that your immune system typically “walled off” and calcified these parasites.
