TAENIA SAGINATA

Taenia Saginata

Taenia Saginata

Taenia: The Insect and Diseases

It is a cosmopolitan parasitic infection linked to three types of parasites. The adult worm lives in the intestines and is composed of rectangular rings containing many eggs (Coil, 1991).

Taenia Saginata

The rings of this parasite migrate to the anus; they release numerous eggs resistant in the environment. The intermediate hosts i.e. cattle, ingest the eggs and then the parasite is hosted in their muscles. Human beings get infected by the ingestion of raw or undercooked meat of beef.

Taenia Solium

The principle is the same except that the intermediate host is the pig. Humans get infected by ingesting undercooked pork. This is considered more dangerous than the Taenia Saginata.

Hymenolepis Nana

Infection is acquired most commonly from eggs which are transferred in food by contaminated fingers and in sewage contaminated drinking water. It is the only cestode that does not need an intermediary to develop into its infective stage.

Taenia Saginata

The Taenia saginata (or Taeniarhynchus saginata) is a parasite belonging to the Platyhelminthes class of Cestodes. It is, generally, known as beef tapeworm because it uses cattle as an intermediate host, whereas the only definitive hosts for this tapeworm are humans. It causes an infection called Taeniasis. It is long roughly between 4 and 6 meters, but can measure up to 12 meters. It has a life cycle of about 8 years. It takes place primarily between the man, where the adult parasites are found, and the cattle, which acts in which the encysted larvae are found preferentially at muscle and central nervous system. In general, the disease of Taeniasis appears throughout the world; however, it is relatively common in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Philippines (Hardman & Limbird, 2006).

A completely grown Taenia saginata is whitish in color. It has around 1000 to 2000 proglottids out of which six are detached almost every day. The eggs are walnut brown, embryonated and about 35 micrometers in diameter having a six hooked oncosphere inside its thick shell. They, generally, stay inside the proglottids until they are out in the environment. Taenia saginata can live up to 25 years (Hardman, 2006).

The intermediate hosts are infected by ingesting feces containing the proglottids which reside inside the eggs of worms. The egg hatches in the intestine and releases the “hexacynth” larvae. The name has been derived due to the reason that it has six hooks, with which it pierces the intestinal wall and then enters into the blood vessels. It then migrates through the vessels arriving in the liver via the portal vein and then to the lungs through the hepatic veins. Then it moves further through the caudal vena cava to the right pulmonary artery, and finally, through the left pulmonary veins to the heart. The definitive host becomes infected by eating raw or undercooked meat containing the larval form. The scolex of parasite attaches to the intestinal wall, after it has been ingested by the humans. It then grows into an adult tapeworm which sheds eggs in the feces ...