Trichinella spiralis

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Trichinella spiralis

• By David Meyer

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What is it?

• Parasitic disease
• Commonly called the trichina worm
• Caused by eating raw or undercooked pork or wild
  game products that are infected with the larvae
  of the roundworm

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Morphology

• Have complete digestive system
• Round cross section
• Bilaterally symmetric
• Has both mouth and anus

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Where is it?

• Most common in the developing world and where
  pigs are commonly fed raw garbage.
• Infection occurs commonly in certain wild
  carnivorous animals and in domestic pigs.

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Diversity and Spread of Trichinella
Just the pink horizontal stripes are T. spiralis
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Life Cycle
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Signs and Symptoms
Second Stage
First Stage

• Nausea
• Diarrhea
• Vomiting
• Fatigue
• Fever
• Abdominal pain

• Headaches
• Fever
• Chills
• Eye swelling
• Achy joints
• Muscle pains
• Hemorrhages
• Itchy skin

As worms encyst in different body parts.
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Incubation Period

• Abdominal symptoms occur 1-2 days after
  infection.
• Further symptoms usually occur 2-8 weeks after
  consuming contaminated meat.
• Severity often depends on the number of worms
  ingested.
• Mild cases of this disease are often mistaken for
  the flu.

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Risk Factors

• Eating raw or undercooked meats, especially pork
  and wild game.
• It is not transmitted from one person to another.

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Diagnosis

• A blood test or muscle biopsy
• Stool studies can detect adult worms, females
  being 3mm long and males about half that size.

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Female
Male
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Treatment

• Corticosteroids-treat joint pain and
  inflammation. Treat symptoms more than anything.
• Thiabendazole-kills the adult worms, but there is
  no treatment however, that kills the larvae.

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Prevention

• Cooking meat products thoroughly.
• Freezing pork than 6 inches thick for 20 days at
  5 F or three days at -4 F kills larval worms.
• Cooking all meat fed to pigs or wild game.

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More Information

• Cdc.gov
• Wikipedia.com
• World Health Organization

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