ORLANDO, Fla. — Doctors say a Florida man’s mysterious case of migraines may be the result of a strange bacon habit that had terrifying consequences. According to a new medical review in the American Journal of Case Reports, the man’s preference for eating undercooked bacon led to a parasitic infection called neurocysticercosis. This wasn’t your average case of food poisoning, however, as doctors believe the infection caused clusters of cysts to grow in the patient’s brain!
For over four months, the 52-year-old patient had been suffering from excruciating migraines that were rapidly worsening. According to the report, the severe headaches seemed to radiate from the back of his skull, becoming more frequent and intense. Nothing could relieve the non-stop pain — not even his typical migraine medications.
When the man was finally evaluated at a Florida hospital, brain scans revealed the startling cause for his debilitating headaches. The man’s brain was riddled with cysts from a case of neurocysticercosis. Clusters of these larvae-filled cysts peppered the deep folds of his brain.
Neurocysticercosis is the most common parasitic brain infection globally, but it’s extraordinarily rare in the United States. It’s especially rare for someone with no obvious risk factors, like traveling to the developing world, where food contamination is more common.
So, how did this man, who hadn’t ventured beyond a cruise to the Bahamas in recent years, contract such a bizarre tropical brain infection?
The answer was his lifelong habit of eating undercooked bacon. Neurocysticercosis is caused by the pork tapeworm Taenia solium, which uses pigs as a carrier before infecting humans. People can unknowingly become infected by eating the tapeworm’s eggs in contaminated food or water.
Those eggs then hatch into larvae that spread through the body, forming cysts in various tissues — including the brain. As these cysts grow and spread over time, they can trigger neurological issues like seizures and headaches.
Although neurocysticercosis is still a major public health problem in other countries, it rarely occurs in the U.S. because of the country’s robust food safety standards and modern sanitation practices for meat.
In this case, however, doctors believe the 52-year-old’s love of “non-crispy” undercooked bacon is the source of his tapeworm infection and neurocysticercosis. The theory is that he accidentally ate live tapeworm eggs at some point — possibly after not washing his hands. Researchers call this accidental ingestion of one’s own tapeworm eggs autoinfection.
After the neurocysticercosis diagnosis was confirmed through blood tests and brain scans, doctors treated the man with a combination of anti-parasitic drugs and steroids. The medications aimed to kill the tapeworm larvae while reducing brain inflammation from the dying cysts.
Fortunately, this unconventional treatment worked. Over the following months, the brain cysts began to disappear, and the man’s brutal migraines finally went away.
“It is very rare for patients to contract neurocysticercosis outside of classic exposures or travel, and such cases in the United States were thought to be nonexistent,” study corresponding author Stephen Carlan and his team write in the American Journal of Case Reports.
“Undercooked pork consumption is a theoretical risk factor for neurocysticercosis via autoinoculation, as we suspected in this case. It is historically very unusual to encounter infected pork in the United States, and our case may have public health implications.”
