The culprit, doctors said, was a parasite in the slug called a rat lungworm, which can burrow into the human brain. In Brazil, a failed attempt at escargot farming likely brought in the brain-invading parasite. Kits sold for growing giant African snails in the backyard spawned a popular home business in the late s. When that cottage industry collapsed—Brazilians, it turns out, are not huge fans of the delicacy—the snails invaded the environment, and the rat lungworm parasite inevitably took up residence.
In , National Geographic reported on two human cases of meningitis in Brazil that were caused by rat lungworm from African giant snails. In Florida, the parasite has turned up in dogs, miniature horses, birds, and various wild animals, Walden says.
And a good first step is not eating raw gastropods. As the name suggests, rat lungworm Angiostrongylus cantonensis spends part of its life in the lungs of rats. It spreads when infected rats cough up baby worms and wind up swallowing some.
A snail or slug eats that poop and picks up worm larvae, which grow for a while inside the new slow-moving host. To reproduce, a young lungworm must find its way back into a rat—which usually happens when a rat eats an infected snail or slug. In this unlikely environment, pummeled by waves of pumping blood, the worms finally mate. This explains why things can go so badly when a person eats a slug or snail. As it does in a rat, an ingested lungworm heads for the brain.
That leaves worms burrowing in the brain, damaging it physically, as well as causing inflammation as the immune system fights back.
In , an year-old boy in New Orleans was admitted to a local hospital with a headache, stiff neck, vomiting, and mild fever. He eventually recovered without treatment. When worms die in the brain, the inflammation can be even more intense, which is why doctors rarely treat the infection with drugs to kill the worms. The same goes for raw frogs and freshwater crabs and shrimp. Instead, you should boil such delicacies for at least three minutes, or cook them to an internal temperature of degrees Fahrenheit the same as chicken for at least 15 seconds to kill any worms, according to the U.
European in origin, it is now the most-widely distributed snail in the United States. These snails are one of the slowest animals on earth, but they also make short work of the leaves and stems of crops and other plants.
By producing mucus from the glands of the foot, the snail can move by sliding along the slimy mucus surface. Snails are not a recent fast food.
Prehistoric humans ate snails as part of their diet, and early Romans often farmed snails to meet the demand for cuisine for the upper echelon. However, many poorer communities harvested their own snails from fields and gardens, keeping the damage under control and adding much-needed protein to their diet. In France, escargot has been a delicacy since at least the s. The common brown garden snail, also known as the petit gris snail, feeds on living and dead plants. The U. This land snail, formerly known as Helix aspersa, was probably introduced to the western coast of the United States around by import.
A predatory snail, the decollate snail Rumina decollata is being used as a control for the brown garden snail. The United States has several other varieties of snails living within its borders, including the larger Giant African snail Achatina fulica eats a variety of crops and lives in warm, moist areas such as Florida. The rosy wolf snail Euglandina rosea is a type of carnivorous snail that feeds on other snails the snail is no relation to the author.
Brewer has had an interest in snails for decades, once leading a conservation project that focused on an endangered snail in Tahiti. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. Skip to content Contact us Emergency information. Home Infectious diseases Fact sheets Rat lung worm disease Angiostrongylus cantonensis factsheet Fact sheets Currently selected Control guidelines.
Rat lung worm disease is an extremely rare cause of meningitis in Australia. It is associated with eating infected snails and slugs. Most people make a full recovery but occasionally it can cause serious illness. Simple precautions reduce the risk of the disease. Last updated: 06 March Current as at: Wednesday 6 March Contact page owner: Communicable Diseases.
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