Parasites in the Brain

A handful of parasites can reach the human brain, and the best known of them — the larval cyst of the pork tapeworm — is one of the commonest causes of acquired epilepsy in the world. This page sets the brain-parasite points from a 2026 integrative-oncology presentation beside the published research: how these infections are actually caught, how they are treated today, why they are sometimes mistaken for brain tumours, and what the 2023 case of a live python roundworm in a woman's brain really showed.

What the Presentation Said
What Neurocysticercosis Is
Pork or Eggs: How the Brain Cysts Are Caught
Seizures, Epilepsy and How Common It Is
Is Surgery the Only Way? The 2017 Guideline
What the Drug Trials Found
Brain Cysts Mistaken for Tumours — and the Reverse
The Python Roundworm Case From Australia
Other Parasites That Reach the Brain
What Brain Scans Can and Cannot Show
How the Claim Compares With the Research
What Is Not Known
Connections
Key Research Papers
Featured Videos

What the Presentation Said

Early in the talk the speaker argued that parasites are an under-recognised, worldwide problem — present in Switzerland, Germany and New York City as well as in the tropics — and that their effects reach far beyond the gut, including into the brain. The presentation made these brain-related points:

During medical training the speaker assisted neurosurgeons, many times, in operations to remove a parasite from the brain. The parasite was named as the one that causes cysticercosis (the automatic transcript garbles the word), and it was said to come mainly from undercooked pork.
The speaker said this parasite travels to the brain and that there is no way to remove it other than surgically, and described no longer eating pork after that experience.
The speaker said parasites can go everywhere in the body, eating into the calcium of bones and into the myelin sheath, the fatty coating that insulates nerve fibres, and also affecting the tissue of the colon.
A case history was presented: a 64-year-old woman with abdominal pain, diarrhoea, dry cough and night sweats, who later developed memory loss and depression. Surgery found a live 8-centimetre worm, identified as a parasite of carpet pythons, probably caught by swallowing its eggs. The transcript gives her country as Austria; the published case report places her in Australia.
Later, discussing testing, the speaker said that scans — computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound — can show parasites that invade tissue and form cysts, lesions or tumours, and pointed back to a brain scan shown earlier with an area of parasitic infection.

The presentation did not name Angiostrongylus, Naegleria, Toxoplasma or Echinococcus in this part of the talk. They are covered below because they are the other parasites the research describes in the human brain, and they test the speaker's general claim that parasites can reach it.

What Neurocysticercosis Is

The pork tapeworm, Taenia solium, can live in people in two quite different forms, and the difference matters for everything that follows.

Taeniasis is the adult tapeworm living in the human intestine. It is a long ribbon of segments attached to the gut wall, and it sheds eggs in the stool.
Cysticercosis is infection of the body's tissues with the larval stage, a small fluid-filled cyst called a cysticercus. When cysts form in the brain or spinal cord, the condition is called neurocysticercosis.

The 2017 clinical guideline from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene describes the cycle this way: the adult tapeworm is acquired by eating undercooked pork; its eggs pass in the stool; pigs normally carry the cysts after swallowing eggs from human faeces, but humans can carry the cysts too after swallowing the eggs (White and colleagues, 2018).

A review of the disease describes what the cysts do once they are in the brain. They can sit in the brain tissue itself, in the fluid spaces around the brain, inside the fluid-filled chambers called ventricles, or in the spinal cord. The brain is a hostile place for them: in some people the immune system destroys the cysts, while in others they live unchanged for years. The cysts usually cause trouble when they begin to die and the immune system reacts to them (Del Brutto, 2014; Carpio and colleagues, 2021).

Pork or Eggs: How the Brain Cysts Are Caught

The presentation linked the brain parasite to undercooked pork. Published sources describe a more specific route.

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC) states that cysticercosis develops after a person swallows tapeworm eggs passed in the faeces of someone who carries the adult tapeworm, through contaminated food, water, surfaces or fingers. Its page states plainly: “Eating pork cannot give you cysticercosis.”
A clinical review states that people most often swallow the eggs directly from a tapeworm carrier by the faecal–oral route, and less often from contaminated food (Del Brutto, 2014).
A tapeworm carrier can also infect themselves with their own eggs, and can infect members of their household (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; White and colleagues, 2018). For this reason the 2017 guideline suggests that household members of a person who probably caught neurocysticercosis outside an endemic area be screened for tapeworm carriage, and notes that this is a public-health task often handled by the local health department.

So undercooked pork does play a part in the cycle — it is how a person comes to carry the adult tapeworm that sheds the eggs — but eating pork does not put cysts in the eater's brain. A person who never eats pork can still develop neurocysticercosis if they swallow eggs from someone else who carries the tapeworm.

Seizures, Epilepsy and How Common It Is

Neurocysticercosis is described in reviews as the most common worm infection of the nervous system and a leading cause of acquired epilepsy worldwide (Del Brutto, 2014). The 2017 guideline gives these figures (White and colleagues, 2018):

In endemic regions — including Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia — it is linked to about 29% of cases of seizures.
It accounts for about 2% of patients who arrive at United States emergency rooms with seizures.
Estimates suggest more than 2,000 cases a year in the United States, with hospital charges of nearly $100 million a year.
About 20% of cases present with raised pressure inside the skull, mostly from blocked fluid flow (obstructive hydrocephalus).

A 2025 review adds that sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as a newly recognised hotspot, alongside the long-known endemic areas of South and Central America, and that imported cases are seen in non-endemic countries (Singh and colleagues, 2025).

Seizures are not always lifelong epilepsy

A 2021 review of the seizure research explains that the seizures usually come from the brain's inflammatory reaction as a cyst dies. Most of these acute seizures do not go on to become epilepsy, and prospective studies suggest epilepsy after neurocysticercosis, while more common than in the general population, is less common than older cross-sectional studies implied. The review also reports that antiparasitic treatment speeds the change of cysts from the active to the degenerating stage and is linked to a short-term drop in focal seizures, but has not been found to affect the later step to a calcified scar — and that calcified scar is the lesion associated with later epilepsy (Carpio and colleagues, 2021).

Is Surgery the Only Way? The 2017 Guideline

The presentation said that surgery is the only way to remove this parasite from the brain. The 2017 guideline from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene sorts the disease by where the cysts are and what stage they are in, and its recommendations differ sharply between those forms (White and colleagues, 2018). The panel notes that many of its recommendations rest on observational studies, anecdotal data or expert opinion rather than randomised trials.

Where the guideline recommends medicines, not surgery

Living cysts in the brain tissue (the commonest form): when pressure inside the skull is not raised, the guideline recommends antiparasitic drugs in all patients. It recommends albendazole alone for one or two cysts, and albendazole combined with praziquantel for more than two cysts.
Corticosteroids (anti-inflammatory steroid medicines such as dexamethasone) are recommended to begin before the antiparasitic drugs, because killing the cysts provokes inflammation.
Single enhancing lesions (one degenerating cyst): the guideline suggests albendazole with corticosteroids.
Cysts in the fluid spaces at the base of the brain (subarachnoid disease): antiparasitic drugs plus high-dose anti-inflammatory therapy, often for more than a year.
Seizures: anti-seizure medicines are recommended for all patients with seizures.

Where the guideline recommends surgery or a procedure

Cysts inside the ventricles: removal by minimally invasive neuroendoscopy (a thin camera passed into the brain's fluid chambers) for the lateral and third ventricles, and surgical removal for the fourth ventricle where possible.
Hydrocephalus: in untreated hydrocephalus or diffuse brain swelling, the guideline recommends managing the pressure first and not giving antiparasitic drugs; hydrocephalus usually requires a surgical approach such as a shunt.
Cysts in the eye: surgical removal is suggested rather than drugs.
Calcified scars with drug-resistant epilepsy: evaluation for surgical removal of the seizure focus is suggested.

Where the guideline recommends no antiparasitic drug at all

For calcified lesions — dead cysts that have turned into small chalky scars — the guideline recommends treating symptoms alone rather than giving antiparasitic drugs, because there is no living parasite left to kill.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention summarises the same picture for patients: infections are generally treated with a combination of antiparasitic and anti-inflammatory drugs; surgery is sometimes necessary depending on where the cyst is, how it responds to drugs and how much brain swelling there is; and treatment to kill the parasite is not always needed.

Safety findings in the guideline

The guideline recommends an eye examination before antiparasitic treatment; it states that the treatment may lead to blindness in some people with unsuspected cysts inside the eye.
It states that antiparasitic drugs can worsen brain swelling and, in people with raised pressure inside the skull, can lead to fatal events such as herniation of the brain.
It suggests screening for latent tuberculosis and for Strongyloides stercoralis, or giving empiric treatment for Strongyloides, in patients likely to need prolonged corticosteroids. The guideline states that corticosteroids increase the risk of Strongyloides hyperinfection, a life-threatening overgrowth of the worm, while noting that reported rates are low.
It recommends monitoring for liver injury and low white-cell counts when albendazole is given for more than 14 days.
In pregnancy it suggests deferring antiparasitic treatment until after delivery.

Surgery was, then, a real and central part of treatment for some forms of the disease, and it still is for cysts in the ventricles and the eye. It is not the only way to treat the disease. Decisions about any individual case belong with a clinician.

What the Drug Trials Found

The guideline's drug recommendations rest on a body of randomised trials, whose results are more modest and more mixed than a simple "the drug kills the cyst" story suggests.

Cochrane review, 2021

A Cochrane systematic review pooled 16 randomised trials that compared antiparasitic drugs with no antiparasitic drug (Monk and colleagues, 2021). Almost all usable data were for albendazole; only two trials studied praziquantel, and their data could not be pooled.

Across all participants, there was no clear difference in seizure recurrence (risk ratio 0.94; 10 trials, 1,054 participants; low-certainty evidence, with marked differences between trials).
In people with a single cyst, albendazole probably reduced seizure recurrence (risk ratio 0.61; 5 trials, 396 participants; moderate certainty). These trials enrolled people with non-viable cysts in the brain tissue, mostly children.
In people with multiple cysts, the reviewers were uncertain; the direction of the very low-certainty evidence pointed towards harm (risk ratio 2.05; 2 trials, 321 participants).
Albendazole probably slightly improved complete clearance of lesions on scans (risk ratio 1.22; 13 trials, 1,324 participants).
More side effects were seen with albendazole or praziquantel than with placebo — most often headache, abdominal pain, and nausea or vomiting.

Albendazole compared with praziquantel

A 2008 meta-analysis of six comparative trials found albendazole associated with better seizure control and more complete disappearance of cysts than praziquantel, with no difference in side effects; the authors called the trials scarce and asked for more randomised studies (Matthaiou and colleagues, 2008).

Combining the two drugs in children

A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in 60 Indian children with persisting cysts found complete resolution at 6 months in 62% of the combination group compared with 26.3% on albendazole alone. Calcification was 10% in all three groups, and the combination did not raise seizure recurrence or side effects (Singh and colleagues, 2022).
An open-label trial in 52 children with two or more active cysts found complete resolution in 38.3% of cysts with the combination and 29.2% with albendazole alone — a difference that was not statistically significant (Rani and colleagues, 2024).

A 2025 review notes that a newer drug, oxfendazole, is in clinical trials, and that antigen-based blood tests may in future allow point-of-care diagnosis and monitoring (Singh and colleagues, 2025).

Brain Cysts Mistaken for Tumours — and the Reverse

This page sits in a cancer section because parasitic brain cysts and brain tumours can look alike on scans. Reviews note that, apart from cysts in which the tapeworm's head (the scolex) can be seen as a small dot, the imaging findings of neurocysticercosis are not specific and appear in other brain diseases (Del Brutto, 2014). Published case reports describe confusion in both directions:

Mistaken for a primary brain tumour. A 25-year-old man in Indonesia with repeated seizures was first treated for a brain abscess, then suspected on magnetic resonance imaging of having an oligodendroglioma (a type of brain tumour). The lesion was surgically removed, and pathology found tapeworm larvae. After a 14-day course of antiparasitic treatment he was seizure-free. The authors wrote that appropriate antiparasitic treatment may resolve the disease fully and spare patients an unnecessary invasive operation (Soejitno and colleagues, 2020).
Mistaken for a pituitary-region tumour. A 44-year-old woman with five years of headaches, later vision problems and short-term memory loss, was thought to have a craniopharyngioma. Pathology and a positive antibody test showed cysticercosis; albendazole and a tapering course of steroids improved her symptoms and cleared the scan findings (Rehman and colleagues, 2023).
Mistaken for cancer spread. A 60-year-old man in Spain with no travel history had several brain lesions that first looked like metastases from a cancer elsewhere. Imaging and serology confirmed neurocysticercosis acquired locally — something the authors describe as exceptionally rare in Western Europe (Hernández-Sánchez and colleagues, 2026).
The reverse: cancer mistaken for parasites. In South Korea, cystic brain metastases from a lung cancer were at first misdiagnosed as neurocysticercosis because of their unusual appearance (Kim and colleagues, 2017).

The sibling page Toxoplasma and Brain Tumors covers the same kind of mix-up between cerebral toxoplasmosis and brain lymphoma or glioblastoma, together with the research on Toxoplasma and brain-tumour risk.

The Python Roundworm Case From Australia

The case described in the presentation was published in 2023 in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Hossain and colleagues, 2023). It was the first reported human infection with any Ophidascaris roundworm. The main points of the published report:

Who and where. A 64-year-old woman from south-eastern New South Wales, Australia — not Austria.
First symptoms. In January 2021 she was admitted after three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhoea, followed by dry cough and night sweats. She had a very high count of eosinophils, white blood cells that rise in many parasite infections, and lesions in the lungs, liver and spleen. Tests for several parasites and stool examinations were negative.
A key detail. She was diagnosed with a hypereosinophilic syndrome and treated with immunosuppressive medicines — prednisolone, mycophenolate and later mepolizumab. The authors suggest this immunosuppression may have allowed the larva to reach her brain.
Brain symptoms. In 2022 she developed forgetfulness and worsening depression. Magnetic resonance imaging showed a 13 × 10 millimetre lesion in the right frontal lobe.
The worm. At an open biopsy in June 2022, surgeons found and removed a live, moving worm 80 millimetres long and 1 millimetre wide — a third-stage larva of Ophidascaris robertsi, a roundworm whose adult form lives in carpet pythons. DNA sequencing in two laboratories confirmed the species. No other worms were found.
How she was probably infected. She lived near a lake inhabited by carpet pythons and gathered a native green (warrigal greens) there for cooking. She had no direct contact with snakes. The authors hypothesise that she swallowed eggs shed in python droppings, from the plants or via her hands or kitchen equipment.
After surgery. She was given ivermectin and albendazole for possible larvae elsewhere, with a weaning course of dexamethasone to limit inflammation; the authors note albendazole penetrates the central nervous system better than ivermectin. Six months after surgery her eosinophil count was normal and her neuropsychiatric symptoms had improved but persisted.

The presentation's account — gut and lung symptoms first, then memory loss and depression, a live 8-centimetre python worm removed at surgery, eggs probably swallowed by accident — matches the published report. The report adds that the patient was heavily immunosuppressed at the time, and that this was a first-ever human case, not a common infection.

Other Parasites That Reach the Brain

Rat lungworm (Angiostrongylus cantonensis)

This roundworm of rats passes through snails and slugs. People are accidental hosts who become infected by eating raw or undercooked snails or slugs, or produce contaminated with them; the larvae travel to the brain and cause eosinophilic meningitis, an inflammation of the brain's lining marked by eosinophils in the spinal fluid (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

In two outbreaks among 17 Thai workers in Taiwan in 1998–1999 who had eaten raw snails, all 17 developed severe headache and 12 (71%) developed eosinophilic meningitis. The severity of illness tracked the number of snails eaten, and all patients recovered with minimal lasting neurological effects (Tsai and colleagues, 2001).
A systematic review of 22 cases reported in Europe between 1988 and 2019, nearly all imported from French Polynesia, South-East Asia and the Caribbean, found headache in 90% and eosinophils in the spinal fluid in 93%; brain imaging was normal in most cases. The authors report that current approaches centre on pain relief, corticosteroids and periodic removal of spinal fluid, while antiparasitic treatment remains debated (Federspiel and colleagues, 2020).
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that most infected people recover without treatment and that the parasite dies over time.

The "brain-eating ameba" (Naegleria fowleri)

This is a single-celled ameba, not a worm. It lives in warm fresh water and soil. If water containing it goes up the nose, it can reach the brain and cause primary amebic meningoencephalitis, which destroys brain tissue. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 167 reported cases in the United States between 1962 and 2024, and only four people survived. Infection does not come from swallowing water and does not pass from person to person.

Toxoplasma

In people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), reactivated Toxoplasma gondii is the most common cause of mass-like lesions in the brain, typically ring-enhancing lesions deep in the brain. A 2019 review reports that pyrimethamine-based regimens and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole appear to have similar effectiveness (Vidal, 2019). Its links to brain tumours are covered on the sibling page Toxoplasma and Brain Tumors.

Echinococcus (hydatid tapeworms)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes two forms. Cystic echinococcosis, from the dog tapeworm Echinococcus granulosus, produces slowly enlarging cysts in the liver, lungs and other organs. Alveolar echinococcosis, from Echinococcus multilocularis, starts in the liver; spread to the lungs and brain is described as not uncommon, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's clinical overview says the larval mass resembles a malignancy in appearance and behaviour. This is one of the few situations in which a parasite produces something that behaves like a tumour.

What Brain Scans Can and Cannot Show

The presentation said scans can reveal parasites that form cysts, lesions or tumours in tissue. The research agrees that imaging is central, and adds that it rarely settles the question alone.

The 2017 guideline recommends both a brain magnetic resonance imaging and a non-contrast computed tomography scan to classify newly diagnosed neurocysticercosis. It explains that computed tomography is generally more sensitive for calcified lesions, while magnetic resonance imaging is more sensitive for the tapeworm's head, swelling, small lesions and cysts in the fluid spaces and ventricles (White and colleagues, 2018).
It recommends a specific blood antibody test, the enzyme-linked immunotransfer blot, to confirm the diagnosis. It describes this test as close to 100% sensitive when there are many cysts but poorly sensitive with a single lesion or calcifications only (White and colleagues, 2018).
Accurate diagnosis comes from reading the clinical picture, the scans, the blood tests and the person's exposure history together (Del Brutto, 2014).
In the tumour-mimic cases above, the final answer often came only from pathology after a biopsy or surgery (Soejitno and colleagues, 2020; Rehman and colleagues, 2023).
In the Australian python-roundworm case, scans showed a lesion but no test identified the worm; the diagnosis was made only when the living larva was pulled out (Hossain and colleagues, 2023).

How the Claim Compares With the Research

Supported by the research

Parasites can reach the brain. Published research documents several that do: the pork-tapeworm larva, rat lungworm, the Naegleria ameba, Toxoplasma, Echinococcus and, in one case so far, the python roundworm.
Neurocysticercosis is common and serious. Reviews describe it as a leading cause of acquired epilepsy worldwide, and the 2017 guideline links it to about 29% of seizures in endemic regions, with cases also seen in the United States.
Neurosurgeons operate on brain cysts. The guideline recommends surgery or endoscopy for cysts in the ventricles and the eye, and shunts for many cases of hydrocephalus.
The python-roundworm case. The presentation's description of symptoms, the live 8-centimetre worm and the probable route through swallowed eggs matches the published report.
Scans matter. The guideline recommends magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography, and imaging is central to finding brain cysts.

Supported only in part

"Comes from undercooked pork." Undercooked pork gives a person the adult intestinal tapeworm. The brain cysts come from swallowing the tapeworm's eggs, usually from a human carrier. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that eating pork cannot give a person cysticercosis.
The Australian case as an example. The report describes a first-ever human infection in a woman whose immune system had been suppressed by medicines, and the authors suggest this may have let the larva reach her brain. It shows that such an infection can happen, not that it is common.
Scans show "tumours". Scans show lesions; published cases show parasitic cysts and real tumours being confused in both directions, so a scan alone often cannot tell them apart.

Contradicted by the research

"No way to remove it other than surgically." The 2017 guideline recommends antiparasitic drugs with corticosteroids for the commonest form, cysts in the brain tissue, and no antiparasitic drug at all for calcified scars. Surgery is recommended for particular forms. Randomised trials and a Cochrane review report measurable effects of albendazole on cyst clearance, and on seizures in people with a single cyst.

No research found

Parasites eating into "the calcium lining of the bones" and the myelin sheath, in general. No study was found supporting this as a general property of parasites. The brain parasites described on this page damage tissue in specific ways — inflammation around dying cysts, eosinophilic meningitis, tissue destruction by the Naegleria ameba — and none of the papers reviewed for this page describes parasites feeding on bone calcium or myelin. The calcium seen in neurocysticercosis is the reverse: dead cysts become calcified scars.

What Is Not Known

The true numbers. Neurocysticercosis is a neglected disease, and its burden in many regions, including newly recognised areas of sub-Saharan Africa, is still being mapped (Singh and colleagues, 2025).
The best drug plan for many cysts. The Cochrane review could not say whether albendazole reduces seizures in people with multiple cysts, and the two paediatric trials of combination therapy disagree on how much it adds (Monk and colleagues, 2021; Singh and colleagues, 2022; Rani and colleagues, 2024).
Preventing the calcified scar. Antiparasitic drugs have not been found to change the step from a degenerating cyst to the calcified scar linked with long-term epilepsy (Carpio and colleagues, 2021).
Treatment for rat lungworm. Whether antiparasitic drugs help eosinophilic meningitis is still debated (Federspiel and colleagues, 2020).
Python roundworm in people. With one reported human case, nothing is known about how often it happens, how long larvae survive in people, or the best treatment. The authors expect more cases may emerge, since related species infect snakes worldwide (Hossain and colleagues, 2023).
Many guideline recommendations. The 2017 panel notes that many rest on observational data or expert opinion rather than randomised trials (White and colleagues, 2018).

Connections

Key Research Papers

Hossain ME, Kennedy KJ, Wilson HL, Spratt D, Koehler A, Gasser RB, Šlapeta J, Hawkins CA, Bandi HP, Senanayake SN. Human Neural Larva Migrans Caused by Ophidascaris robertsi Ascarid. Emerg Infect Dis. 2023;29(9):1900-1903. PubMed PMID: 37610238
White AC Jr, Coyle CM, Rajshekhar V, Singh G, Hauser WA, Mohanty A, Garcia HH, Nash TE. Diagnosis and Treatment of Neurocysticercosis: 2017 Clinical Practice Guidelines by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH). Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2018;98(4):945-966. PubMed PMID: 29644966
Monk EJM, Abba K, Ranganathan LN. Anthelmintics for people with neurocysticercosis. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2021;6(6):CD000215. PubMed PMID: 34060667
Matthaiou DK, Panos G, Adamidi ES, Falagas ME. Albendazole versus praziquantel in the treatment of neurocysticercosis: a meta-analysis of comparative trials. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2008;2(3):e194. PubMed PMID: 18335068
Singh K, Saini AG, Khandelwal N, Singhi P. Efficacy of Combination Therapy of Albendazole and Praziquantel vs Albendazole Monotherapy in Children With Persistent Neurocysticercosis: A Randomized Controlled Trial. J Child Neurol. 2022;37(5):366-372. PubMed PMID: 35213246
Rani V, Gehlawat VK, Arya V. Albendazole and praziquantel combination versus albendazole alone in children with multiple neurocysticercosis: An open labelled randomized controlled trial. J Family Med Prim Care. 2024;13(6):2300-2304. PubMed PMID: 39027868
Del Brutto OH. Neurocysticercosis. Handb Clin Neurol. 2014;121:1445-59. PubMed PMID: 24365429
Carpio A, Romo ML, Hauser WA, Kelvin EA. New understanding about the relationship among neurocysticercosis, seizures, and epilepsy. Seizure. 2021;90:123-129. PubMed PMID: 33632613
Singh G, Chomba M, Sander JW. Neurocysticercosis: current diagnostic and treatment paradigms. Curr Opin Neurol. 2025;38(4):380-387. PubMed PMID: 40605684
Soejitno A, Niryana IW, Sriwidyani NP, Susilawathi NM, Witari NP, Sudewi AAR. Neurocysticercosis presented as a solitary cystic parenchymal lesion mimicking primary brain tumor: A case report. IDCases. 2020;22:e01004. PubMed PMID: 33204635
Rehman AF, Lazo-Vasquez AF, Bhatt PK, Quiroz T, Joseph JA, Gultekin S, Montreuil N, Sternberg CA, Ayoade F. Neurocysticercosis mimicking craniopharyngioma: A case report. Clin Case Rep. 2023;11(12):e8166. PubMed PMID: 38046801
Hernández-Sánchez E, Monllor P, Gil-Fortúño M, Guillamón E. Autochthonous Neurocysticercosis Brain Lesions Mimicking Metastatic Disease, Spain. Emerg Infect Dis. 2026;32(7):1220-1221. PubMed PMID: 42365978
Kim SH, Hyun JW, Kim HJ, Gwak HS, Lee SH, Hong EK, Lee Y. De novo cystic brain lesions mimicking neurocysticercosis in ALK-positive lung cancer. Lung Cancer. 2017;110:53-55. PubMed PMID: 28676219
Tsai HC, Liu YC, Kunin CM, Lee SS, Chen YS, Lin HH, Tsai TH, Lin WR, Huang CK, Yen MY, Yen CM. Eosinophilic meningitis caused by Angiostrongylus cantonensis: report of 17 cases. Am J Med. 2001;111(2):109-14. PubMed PMID: 11498063
Federspiel F, Skovmand S, Skarphedinsson S. Eosinophilic meningitis due to Angiostrongylus cantonensis in Europe. Int J Infect Dis. 2020;93:28-39. PubMed PMID: 31972289
Vidal JE. HIV-Related Cerebral Toxoplasmosis Revisited: Current Concepts and Controversies of an Old Disease. J Int Assoc Provid AIDS Care. 2019;18:2325958219867315. PubMed PMID: 31429353