A Tapeworm That Acts Like Cancer Has Reached the US West…

A Tapeworm That Acts Like Cancer Has Reached the US West Coast. No symptoms for 5 to 15 years. Then liver cysts that look and behave like metastatic cancer. Often fatal without treatment. And it just showed up in 37% of coyotes tested in the Pacific Northwest, a region where it had never been detected until this year. Researchers from the University of Washington surveyed 100 coyotes in the Puget Sound region and discovered that 37 carried Echinococcus multilocularis, marking the first time it has been identified in a wild host along the contiguous US West Coast. This is not a distant tropical disease. It is here. It is spreading. And most doctors in affected regions have never seen a case. What is Echinococcus multilocularis? A tapeworm that causes alveolar echinococcosis, one of the most dangerous parasitic diseases in the world. When it infects a person it can produce cancer-like cysts in the liver and in some cases other organs. Without treatment the infection can be fatal. Symptoms may not appear until 5 to 15 years after exposure, making diagnosis and treatment particularly challenging. Alveolar echinococcosis is considered the third most importan