Harmful effects of the pork tapeworm

• what might adult pork tapeworms cause?

  they may cause little discomfort but a long-term infection may produce taeniasis, giving abdominal pains and weakness
• how can you treat adult pork tapeworms?

  with drugs
• how can you reduce the incidence of tapeworm infection?

  • education about the cause
  • public health measures (e.g. sanitation and frequent inspection of meat)
• what happens if a person is infected by eating the eggs of a pork tapeworms directly, rather than the meat from a pig?

  if this happens, dormant embryos can form cysts in various organs, even the eyes and the brain, and damage the surrounding tissue - this is harder to treat than infection with the adult tapeworm
• how common is taeniasis?

  its rare in the UK but it occurs everywhere that pork is consumed