A mother and son developed life-threatening meningitis after eating raw centipedes.
A 78-year-old woman and her 46-year-old son, from Guangzhou, China, both suffered crippling headaches and stiff necks after munching on the worm-like creature.
The centipedes, which are often used dried or crushed in traditional Chinese medicine, contained a parasite called rat lungworm, which can enter the brain and cause inflammation.
The son served his mother raw centipedes, bought from a local vegetable market, in the belief they ease winter colds only for them both to suffer fatigue and cognitive impairment.
After 15 days of treatment with anti-parasitic drugs and steroids, both patients recovered.
This is thought to be the first recorded time people have developed rat lungworm from centipedes, with the parasite more commonly being associated with uncooked slugs, snails and frogs, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
A mother and son developed life-threatening meningitis after eating raw centipedes (stock)
‘Patients believed raw centipedes would be good for their health’
Lingli Lu, who treated the pair at Zhujiang Hospital, said: ‘We don’t typically hear of people eating raw centipedes, but apparently these two patients believed that raw centipedes would be good for their health. Instead it made them sick.’
Scans revealed the larvae was in the woman’s brain and the man’s right lung, according to the findings published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Scientists from the hospital bought 20 centipedes from the same market as the patients.
Rat lungworm larvae was found in seven of those purchased, with an average of 56 larvae per centipede.
Parasite goes to the brain and ‘stays there’
Heather Stockdale Walden, from the University of Florida, previously told CNN: ‘When [the larvae] gets in a human it can get lost, and it will go to the brain, and it’ll stay there’.
The larvae can mature in the brain before migrating to the lungs via the arteries. Adult worms are found in the lungs, with females laying up to 15,000 eggs a day.
The parasite is unable to survive for long in humans, with most cases resolving on their own.
Yet some patients suffer fever, nausea, vomiting, blood clots and a lack of blood supply to major organs, with some cases even being fatal.
People can reduce their risk of infection by washing vegetables thoroughly and cooking any snails, slugs or frogs before eating them.
Centipedes are often used dried or crushed in traditional Chinese medicine (stock)
Two women lose their hair after eating pumpkin soup and a side of squash
This comes after research released last March suggested two women lost their hair after eating pumpkin soup and a side-dish of squash.
Just weeks after consuming the vegetables, the unnamed women, believed to be from France, experienced spontaneous alopecia, which affected their scalps and genitals, a case report reveals.
Such symptoms are thought to be due to cucurbit poisoning, which occurs when people consume excessive amounts of the bitter-tasting compound cucurbitacin.
Shop-bought pumpkins and squashes contain trace amounts of cucurbitacin, however, it can be present in homegrown produce, particularly if the vegetables are grown with little water.
It is believed to be the first time cucurbit poisoning has been associated with hair loss.
Both of the women experienced short-term nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea after eating the vegetables before going on to develop trichorrhexis nodosa, which causes hair strands all over the body to snap off.
It is unclear if their hair has completely regrown.