The top image shows doctors removing the pork tapeworm from the patient’s mouth. The bottom image shows the intact tapeworm after it was removed from the man’s gut. The tapeworm was 1.88 meters (6.6 feet) long. 
 
 Doctors in India removed a lengthy pork tapeworm from a man's gut, according to a recent report of the man's case. 
 
 The tapeworm, which goes by the scientific name Taenia solium, was nearly 2 meters (6.6 feet) long. In fact, it was the longest worm that Dr. Cyriac Philips, a liver specialist at PVS Memorial Hospital in India who treated the man, had ever seen, he said. 
 
 The 48-year-old man told the doctors that he had been having abdominal pain for two months before he sought medical attention, according to the brief report of the man's case, published today (Jan. 25) in The New England Journal of Medicine. 
 
 The doctors performed a colonoscopy, and found a segment of an undulating worm in the man's colon, Philips told Live Science. [The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites] 
 
 In patients with tapeworms, doctors typically find segments of the parasite in the gut, Philips said. But in this case, the piece of the parasite in the man's colon was only a part of the story. 
 
 Next, the doctors performed an endoscopy, meaning that they inserted a camera into the man's stomach and the upper part of his small intestine, to explore the upper part of the man's digestive system, according to the report. 
 
 They were surprised to find a whole worm curled up in the upper part of the man's small intestine, Philips said. 
 
 The doctors were able to remove the worm by pulling it up through the man's mouth, according to the report. The intact tapeworm spanned 1.88 m (6.2 feet), the doctors wrote. 
 
 Tapeworms can grow to be longer than 11.5 feet (3.5 m) and live for years in a person's gut, according to the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Because tapeworms usually do not cause symptoms, people may not realize they have an infection, the NLM says. In some cases, however, a tapeworm can cause abdominal pain, according to the NLM. 
 
 The whole procedure, which included the endoscopy and the parasite removal, took about an hour and 15 minutes, Philips said. The man was sedated during the procedure, Philips said. 
 
 After the tapeworm was removed, the man was given anti-parasitic medications to kill any remains of the tapeworm, according to the report. A month after the tapeworm's removal, the man reported having no additional symptoms, the doctors wrote. 
 
 In October, doctors in New York reported seeing an increase in a different type of infection from this same tapeworm, which occurs when a person ingests eggs from the pork tapeworm. These eggs can form cysts throughout the body, including the brain. The lead author of that report, Dr. Amy Spallone, a resident in internal medicine at Stony Brook University Hospital in New York, told Live Science at the time that the prevalence of this particular type of infection in the rest of the U.S. is not well understood. 
 
 Originally published on Live Science. ||||| This image shows the tapeworm that the patient discharged from his body. It measured 20 feet 4 inches long. 
 
 A man in China who enjoyed eating raw beef became infected with a parasite — a 20-foot-long tapeworm —that came from including this food in his diet, a new case report reveals. 
 
 The parasite had attached to the 38-year-old man's small intestine and had likely been inside him for at least two years before doctors diagnosed the infection as beef tapeworm of the species Taenia saginata, according to the case report, published online today (Jan. 20) in The New England Journal of Medicine. 
 
 Tapeworm infections are quite rare in Central China, where this case took place, said Jian Li, of the department of infectious diseases at Renmin Hospital in Shiyan, China, who diagnosed the man and co-authored the case report. 
 
 Although the tapeworm infection rate is quite high in the northwest and southwest districts of China, this was the first case of tapeworm seen in this part of China in 30 years, Li said. 
 
 Tapeworms are common globally, and Ethiopia, a country where people like to eat raw meat, has one of the highest rates of infection from beef tapeworm, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who was not involved in the case. 
 
 But beef tapeworms are rare in the United States, Hotez said. 
 
 According to the case report, the man went to see his doctor in the spring of 2015 because he was having stomach pain, vomiting, had lost his appetite, felt weak and was losing weight, Li told Live Science. The symptoms had begun just three days earlier, but the man had already lost about 5 to 10 kilograms (11 to 22 lbs.), he said. [The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites] 
 
 When the man came to the doctor's office, he brought a fragment of the parasite with him that he found in his stool, Li said. He also told his doctor that he liked to eat raw beef. 
 
 From these two pieces of information — the parasite fragment in his stool, which was later examined under a microscope, and his consumption of raw beef — the doctors deduced that the man was infected with a beef tapeworm, Li said. 
 
 Over the past two years, the man's medical history also showed that he had been seen by several different doctors and given treatment for stomachaches, pain in his abdomen and anemia, which is a low level of healthy red blood cells. 
 
 This image shows one of the tapeworm's proglottids. A proglottid is a segment of a tapeworm that may contain eggs, and be shed in a person's feces as part of the worm's reproductive cycle. Eggs are visible inside this proglottid. Credit: The New England Journal of Medicine ©2016 
 
 Tapeworms can live for years in a person's intestines and cause no symptoms, or only mild ones, such as fullness or nausea after eating, Hotez told Live Science. 
 
 But it takes a long time for tapeworms to grow as long as this one did, Hotez explained, adding that other types of invertebrates, an animal group that includes worms, flies, snails and mosquitoes, tend to not live as long as tapeworms do. 
 
 No more rare beef 
 
 Cattle can become infected with T. saginata when they are out to pasture and feed on the eggs of the parasite, which were passed in human feces, especially in areas of poor sanitation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Those tapeworm eggs can hatch inside the cow, penetrate the intestinal wall and then circulate to the animal's muscles. 
 
 People can become infected with the parasite by eating raw or undercooked beef from a contaminated cow. The tapeworm eggs and larvae can migrate to the small intestine, attach to the intestinal wall and mature into an adult tapeworm, the CDC says. 
 
 An adult tapeworm can produce eggs and tapeworm segments that are shed from the body in feces, according to the CDC. 
 
 Tapeworms from a related species, known as Taenia solium, can be acquired from eating raw or undercooked pork. But beef tapeworms tend to grow larger in size (up to 33 feet) and produce more eggs than pork tapeworms, according to the CDC. 
 
 If the larvae of a pork tapeworm have migrated out of the intestines and formed cysts in other tissues, such as the brain, they may cause neurological symptoms, including seizures. Pork tapeworms are a major cause of hundreds of thousands of cases of epilepsy worldwide, Hotez said. [Top 7 Germs in Food That Make You Sick] 
 
 This egg from the tapeworm (seen here under a microscope) was found in the man's stool. Credit: The New England Journal of Medicine ©2016 
 
 Both beef and pork tapeworm are considered "neglected tropical diseases," a category of infectious diseases that have never gotten much attention until recently, Hotez said. 
 
 In the case report, the man's doctors explain that they treated their patient with an oral prescription medication that caused him to pass the long tapeworm out of his body 2.5 hours later. 
 
 Three months after expelling the tapeworm, the man felt better. His appetite and weight returned to normal. 
 
 But he likely will never eat raw or rare beef again, Li suspects. Being infected with a parasite for at least two years was a very unforgettable experience for the man, he explained. 
 
 "It was physically, emotionally and financially exhausting for him," Li said. 
 
 Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. ||||| A Chinese man who visited his doctor after suffering from severe tummy ache was found to have a giant tapeworm growing inside his stomach - after years of gorging on raw beef. 
 
 The 38-year-old patient told medics in Shiyan, China he had been vomiting and losing weight at an alarming speed. 
 
 He told them he had endured “abdominal pain and chronic anaemia” over the previous two years. 
 
 Doctors described their initial physical examination of him as “largely unremarkable” - but they found a tapeworm’s egg in his stools. 
 
 They proceeded to gave him drugs until he eventually excreted the tapeworm - which measured a whopping 6.2 metres. 
 
 It was later discovered the patient had become infected by the taenia saginata (beef tapeworm) parasite, caused by his love of raw beef, according to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine published on Thursday. 
 
 Dr Jian Li, leading the study for Hubei University of Medicine, wrote: “The tapeworm attaches to the small intestine and can grow to be several metres in length. Humans are the only definitive hosts.” 
 
 The man has since made a full recovery - presumably following a change of diet. 
 
 Dr Li wrote: “At a follow-up visit three months later, the patient was asymptomatic, with recovery of appetite and weight.”
– If you have anti-nausea medication handy, you might want to grab it. Doctors are telling of a remarkable medical case in which they had to a remove a 6-foot-long tapeworm from a man's gut by pulling it through his mouth. Live Science explains that the 48-year-old patient from India had been having stomach pains for two months before he decided to visit PVS Memorial Hospital in Kerala. During a colonoscopy, doctors discovered a segment of a pork tapeworm, a common sign that a larger tapeworm is hiding elsewhere in the body. Doctors then maneuvered a camera into the man's upper intestine, where they found what Dr. Cyriac Philips describes as the longest tapeworm he's ever seen. The worm was curled up, but as doctors began slowly pulling it out through the patient's mouth in what must have felt like an endless scarf gag, its size became clear. In the end, it measured a little over 6 feet long, doctors write in the New England Journal of Medicine. The patient—who was kindly sedated during the 1.5-hour procedure—likely became infected after eating raw or undercooked pork, per the CDC. Those who have tapeworms often don't know it because they're typically symptom-free. (A 20-foot-long tapeworm caused a man to lose 22 pounds in three days.)