Chinese woman killed frogs at home, ended up with 10 cm-long living worms under her skin

Unhygienic cooking habits led to two 10 cm-long living worms getting under the skin of a woman in China. The woman was in immense pain from a big lump on her arm. She said that the lump started appearing a year ago and continued to grow and became as large as a ping-pong ball. Shenzhen TV reported that the woman, surnamed Wang, started experiencing sharp pain and had to ultimately seek medical help. She visited Shenzhen People’s Hospital in Guangdong province, where the doctors removed two worms from her arm. They said they were sparganum, a type of parasite commonly found in the bodies of people with unhealthy lifestyles.

Contamination from killing frogs

Wang said that she cooks frog legs at home and kills them on the same chopping board she also uses for cold dishes. Doctors believe that her kitchen knife and chopping board were likely polluted by sparganum cysts. When she made the cold dishes on the same board, the cysts likely got stuck to the food and entered the bodies of people who ate it. A doctor from the Shenzhen hospital’s dermatological department said, "Sparganums do not mature inside the human body and keep moving around tissues."

“They may go into the hypodermis, muscles, eyes, chest, brain and viscera. The most common symptom is lumps under the skin,” the doctor added. He warned that people need to be extremely careful while cooking food, as it can quickly turn into a breeding ground for parasites. Using the same chopping board for raw and cooked dishes is common in China. However, washing it before switching around could prevent such cases.

Earlier in April this year, an 8cm-long worm was removed from a woman’s brain in China. She blamed it on a mix of high-risk habits, saying that she once placed a raw frog’s leg inside a tooth cavity to treat a toothache. She also frequently drank untreated mountain spring water and consumed medicinal snake wine.