Woman left with 38 mind parasites years after overseas journey and passing large tapeworm
A Welsh woman who backpacked around India in 2007 says she later suffered seizures and a mental health crisis after doctors found 38 parasitic cysts in her brain
Lowri Denman(Image: Collect/PA Real Life)
A 42-year-old Welsh woman thought she’d left her Indian tapeworm nightmare behind – but years later she discovered 38 parasites had taken up residence in her brain.
Lowri Denman contracted a rare parasitic brain infection, neurocysticercosis, after inadvertently swallowing microscopic pork tapeworm eggs believed to have been picked up through contaminated food or water while travelling in India.
Denman was in her mid-twenties when she went backpacking around India in 2007 with a friend for around two to three months. She has said she stuck strictly to a vegetarian diet to try to avoid stomach bugs such as “Delhi belly”, but experts believe infection can still happen through contaminated water, unwashed vegetables or poor hygiene.
The first sign something was badly wrong came years later. In 2010 – three years after her trip – Denman said she went to use a restaurant toilet and passed a metre-long adult tapeworm. She described it as “absolutely disgusting”. Her GP carried out stool tests which came back clear, and because she felt well at the time, she assumed the ordeal was over.
But a second, far more serious stage followed in 2011, the BBC reported. Denman began suffering severe headaches that were out of character for her, before collapsing with a major tonic-clonic seizure and waking up in an ambulance.
Hospital doctors carried out a CT scan and an MRI scan. Initially, medics suspected another infection, until Denman’s mother raised a crucial question. She asked if the seizure be linked to the giant tapeworm her daughter had passed the year before.
Further tests reportedly confirmed that larvae from the same parasite had travelled through her bloodstream and lodged in her central nervous system, leaving 38 parasitic cysts scattered across her brain. Her diagnosis marked the start of a long and punishing ordeal.
Denman was treated with anti-parasitic medication and heavy steroids to reduce swelling in her brain – which initially worked and allowed her a period of relative normality. In 2015, she collapsed at work and new scans showed major fresh swelling around the parasites.
The combination of brain inflammation and prolonged steroid treatment then triggered a severe mental health crisis, including anxiety, paranoia and temporary psychosis, with Denman ultimately spending six weeks in a neuropsychiatric hospital ward. Denman has since made a remarkable recovery.
The parasites were not surgically removed, but killed through treatment and have since calcified within her brain tissue. She has been seizure-free since 2017, is back at work, and is now launching a crowdfunded podcast, 38 Parasites, to raise awareness of the condition and what it can do to sufferers and their families.
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