Is the probability of sparganosis infection high?

Sparganosis infection is not something that many people are very familiar with. But for those who have pets at home, it will definitely be familiar to them. It is a parasite that is born in animals and causes great harm to the health of the animals themselves. When this situation occurs, it often needs to be resolved in a timely manner, otherwise it will pose a fatal threat to the pet. So is the incidence of sparganosis infection high? I believe many people will have this question. Let us now look at the incidence of sparganosis infection.

The scientific name of the sparganosis is Sparganosis mansoni. The adult worms parasitize in the intestines of cats and dogs, and occasionally in the intestines of humans. The eggs are excreted in the feces and hatch into larvae in the water. After the larvae are eaten by humans, they continue to develop central nervous system sparganosis. Simply put, it is a parasitic disease. If a parasite that eats sparganosis enters the body and goes to the brain through the blood, it will cause symptoms such as projectile vomiting, convulsions, fainting, and epilepsy.

harm

Infection method

(1) Sparganosis or procercariae invade through the skin or mucous membranes. In some areas of China, sparganosis is common. If there are sparganosis in frog meat, it can invade the human body through wounds or normal skin and mucous membranes. This is the main way of infection with sparganosis.

(2) Accidental ingestion of sparganosis or procercariae. When eating raw or undercooked frogs, snakes, chickens, pork, horse meat, etc., the ingested sparganosis will pass through the intestinal wall into the abdominal cavity and then migrate to other parts of the body. In addition, drinking raw water or accidentally swallowing lake water while swimming will give infected sword fleas the opportunity to enter the human body and cause infection.

prevention

The symptoms of sparganosis are extremely harmful and difficult to cure, so prevention becomes the key. For most urban residents who have normal eating habits and use safe tap water systems, it is unlikely that they will engage in high-risk behaviors such as swallowing tadpoles raw and applying raw frog meat, nor are they likely to be infected by contaminated water sources. Therefore, the focus of prevention lies in diet.

Keep your mouth shut and give up your "hobby" of wild frogs and snakes

Because the probability of these two types of wild animals carrying sparganosis is very high. Taking the survey results in Hangzhou and surrounding areas as an example, up to 60% of wild frogs and snakes carry sparganosis in their bodies. In the Shanghai area, researchers once found nearly 150 sparganosis from a wild king cobra. Such a high parasitism rate and number of parasites will naturally lead to a surge in the risk of disease. In addition, wild frogs and snakes are important links in the natural ecosystem. Giving up eating them not only reduces the possibility of getting sick, but also protects the natural environment. Why not do it?

However, the frogs, American frogs and bullfrogs currently available on the market are all artificially bred, and the sparganosis in the frogs' bodies are almost extinct.

Scientific processing of food

In the natural environment, sparganosis can withstand temperature changes from -10℃ to 56℃. At zero degrees, also known as chilled storage conditions, sparganosis can survive in the host's muscle tissue for dozens of days. The sparganosis is relatively sensitive to high temperatures. Under in vitro culture conditions, the sparganosis can barely survive at 56°C for more than 5 minutes.

However, some research results show that the sparganosis that parasitizes in food is not so fragile to high temperatures. Someone placed small pieces of frog meat (about 1 cm square) containing sparganosis in an environment of 56°C. After 3 hours, infectious sparganosis still remained in the frog meat. This shows that cooking ingredients thoroughly at a higher temperature is the truly safe way to handle them. Methods such as stir-frying and hot pot often fail to cook certain parts of the ingredients thoroughly, and may pose a safety hazard because the sparganosis cannot be completely killed. Therefore, the hidden danger of sparganosis can be completely eliminated by cooking in boiling water for 2 minutes.

In addition to heating, freezing is also one of the methods to kill sparganosis. Studies have shown that freezing at -20°C for 2 hours can kill all sparganosis in frog meat. Of course, the effect of the freezing method is not only related to temperature and time, but the size of the material is also an important influencing factor. For large packages of frog meat or snake meat, it is safer to freeze them at -20℃ for 24 hours.

Don't count on any seasoning

When preparing food, people often use condiments such as soy sauce, vinegar and ginger juice. It should be said that these seasonings are indeed lethal to sparganosis and can indeed reduce sparganosis infection. However, according to research data, ginger juice does not have the ability to completely kill sparganosis. Although soy sauce and vinegar can completely kill sparganosis, the operating condition is that the very small food materials must be soaked in vinegar for at least 24 hours or in soy sauce for at least 6 hours. In actual operations, it is unlikely that we will cut the ingredients too small or leave them in the seasoning for such a long time. Therefore, relying solely on seasoning and pickling to kill insects is not a reliable method.

Many people like to drink while tasting food, and some people simply soak the ingredients in wine to eat (for example, snake gall). Although the ethanol contained in alcohol has the effect of killing sparganosis, similar to the effect of seasoning, many conditions are required to completely kill sparganosis with the ethanol contained in alcohol. For example, research results show that only 60% ethanol can completely kill the sparganosis in food, and the soaking time must be at least 2 hours, and the size of the food must also be very small. In reality, these conditions are difficult to meet at the same time, so drinking alcohol to kill insects is not very reliable.