Taeniasis (adult intestinal tapeworm) is from eating undercooked or raw "measly" pork. Definitive host (for the adult tapeworm) is man. Normally the adults shed eggs (proglottids) into human feces that are then eaten by the intermediate host (pig/cow). There, the ingested larvae (cystercerci) are liberated and released into the gut of the secondary host where they invade mucosa, spread via blood and lymphatics to the muscles of the secondary/intermediate host (pig/cow).

Cystercosis is an infection in man by the larval stage of the pork tapeworm Taenia solium. The oncospheres (larvae) spread hematogeneously and then encyst in the muscle and brain. (Moving larva can be seen in eye - yechh!) In 3-4 mon the larva has developed fully, by an invagination of the bladder (cyst) wall into itself. The larva is at the end of this invagination. The live larva is inocuous - dead and dying larva are irritating, and cyst capsule may expand by 5-20mm w/fluid. Slowly (2-3 yrs) the cyst will calcify, and ultimately die. Usually of fairly uniform size in the brain. The "racemose" multiloculated cysts occur in CSF cisterns.

Cysticercosis and CSF
326/694 pts had "inflammatory" CSF
CSF eosinophilia (1-12% of leukocytes) was present in 58% of 326 w/inflammatory CSF; complement fixation + in 84% of pts with "inflammatory" CSF
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358/694 had "noniflammatory" CSF
4.3% had eosinophilia of CSF
22% had positive comp. fixation test