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+--- Thread: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites (/showthread.php?tid=4871)
Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - Shekelpal - 12-30-2008
A friend of ours recently came down with rat lung worm, or angiostrongylus cantonensis, causing eosinophilic meningitis. Many people I know have had it, including myself and my husband, but our friend#699;s case was particularly bad, now in the hospital on morphine and steroids. Not a great way to spend the holidays.
This very wet, cool weather has caused an outbreak of the semi-slugs (Parmarion martensi) that carry a nematode in their bodies and slime trail that causes this illness. These things climb all over your walls, roof, catchment, vegetable garden and fruit trees. Please be careful and inspect and wash your food well (with boiled or well filtered water), or additionally, do not eat it fresh from the garden but let it sit inside or in the fridge for a day. The nematode cannot live outside of the slug for very long. Cooking kills the parasite. Note, that the semi-slug is not the only thing to carry this, snails, and I believe some worms can as well - it is just that semi-slug is more plentiful and so is the amount of slime and it is hard to accidently eat an African Snail.
We spray copper sulfate around the footings of the house and the table where I grow vegetables that we eat raw. So far that has worked fairly well, they hit that and turn bronze and die.
The symptoms of this illness vary, but seem to always be accompanied by extreme headache, neck pain and stiffness, and do seem to come on fairly rapidly. I can only describe it as an alien taking over your body. Depending on the number of nematodes that have gone into your bloodstream and found their way up your spinal column and brain to die, as you are not their natural host, there may be other symptoms as mild as an extremely painful arm and shoulder, or as extreme as your whole body being in total agony and encephalitis. You may also have abdominal symptoms and skin that is painful to the touch. The symptoms may last a year or more to some degree and may cause permanent damage.
Though the knowledge about the semi-slug and the nematode#699;s connection with meningitis has been around for at least 5 years, the Hilo Hospital recently seemed to not know much about it. When I had it a few years ago, I contacted the State Dept. of Health to try to make sure that they put out a warning to people and Drs. as it is a reportable Public Health issue. I copied the letter to Gov. Lingle. I never heard anything from her office, but the health dept. called me and in the conversation we had the man said that "this is the price of living in paradise". I asked him if he did not mean to say parasites? He did not laugh.
Anyway, with awareness and caution this is a largely preventable illness. Hope everyone else is having a happy holiday.
RE: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - missydog1 - 12-30-2008
Thank you Shekelpal! This is so important to know about.
I looked around and found a blog article that is helpful too.http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK5Z08I6R09OTB
She washes all her harvested fruit in apple cider vinegar water.
I also note the slugs particularly like papayas.
I'm not sure that I have them, haven't seen them, but I have the other slugs with the thick black bodies, and I think they can carry it too, but aren't suck climbers.
What I want to know is how much washing to do ...
and what about basil and tomatoes, same concerns? Bananas, citrus?
Anyone know how long the nematode will live, i.e. what is a safe waiting period?
This stuff makes me really paranoid.
RE: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - Mitzi M - 12-30-2008
Shekelpal,
Thanks for bringing this up. Sorry about your friend. I was just talking with a friend of mine the other day about the lack of public information about real health risks here Hawai'i. I think its truly shameful that the State Health Dept. has not done more to make this information available to people here. I'm glad you talked to the heath dept. and tried to get Lingle on board.
A friend of mine just spent a few days in the hospital and almost lost his thumb to a staph infection. It came on pretty fast but luckily he knew that it was staph so he got help in time.
I think its critical to let people know what to look out for and how to prevent some of the unique health problems we have here such as meningitis, lepto and staph. There really needs to be a public information campaign about these serious health issues. Why couldn't there at least be a few pages in the front of the phone book about them?
I guess it doesn't paint a very pretty picture for tourists - but they too are at risk and deserve to know what they may be exposed to while visiting.
In some parts of the western mainland its possible to contract bubonic plague from exposure to fleas (usually from carcasses of wild animals or around prairie dog colonies). In many places this information is given out to hunters when they get a permit and is actually included in visitor info and emergency information in the phone books. Plague is easily curable with the right antibiotics, but the trick is to know you have it. The worst cases are tourists who were infected by plague and then got sick when they returned home, never knowing what hit them. Because of this, the health departments in plague areas started an information campaign.
I don't know what its going to take for that to happen in Hawai'i, but in the mean time thanks for sharing this information about how to stay healthy.
Aloha,
Mitzi
RE: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - AlohaSteven - 12-30-2008
Thanks for sharing this significant and hard-won information about your experience and that of your friend. Good to know; very useful specific suggestions, too!
Interrupting a parasite's life cycle at any point can assist in reducing the overall numbers present in a neighborhood and the local micro-environment around a home. Cutting down population numbers among any reservoir of infection can thus assist in reducing the potential hazard. Slugs & snails and their slime are a vector via which nematode larvae infect humans, but rats are the most common harbor via which slugs & snails are themselves becoming infected ...so reducing the local rat population may be useful. Rats can carry many other disease agents such as Hymenolepis nana &/or diminuta (rat tapeworms, which I have identified from fecal specimens of many infected individuals in the tropics) and ectoparasites, so there are all sorts of good reasons to discourage rats from cohabitation with the family.
CDC on the Rat Lungworm
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites/angiostrongylus/factsht_angiostrongylus.htm
Aquatic snails (in freshwater ponds and aquaria) can also harbor A. cantonensis
http://www.fish-keeper.net/Forum/index.php?showtopic=1122
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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
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"There's a scientific reason to be concerned and there's a scientific reason to push for action. But there's no scientific reason to despair."
NASA climate analyst Gavin Schmidt
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RE: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - Guest - 12-30-2008
Have any of y'all tested the efficacy of epsom's salt for the control of slugs and snails?
RE: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - Hotzcatz - 12-31-2008
I haven't tried the epsom salts for anything much more than making tomatoes happier but chickens are real good at eating slugs. We used to have a lot of slugs and those giant African land snails, but between the chickens eating the slugs and me flying all the GALS I find into the gulch (they probably survive the flight but have difficulty surviving the landing) we have a lot less of each of those around here now.
There are also a lot of tropical skin rashes that show up from folks not having chlorinated water. Using micro bacterial soap will keep a lot of the skin rashes away but not all of them since some of them are fungal instead of bacterial. There used to be a sulfur soap which could be used, but I'm not even sure if Long's carries that anymore. They used to have a good fungal creme, too, but haven't seen that in awhile, either.
Kurt Wilson
RE: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - Chuysmom - 12-31-2008
So where can we find copper sulfate? It's a great idea.
Carrie Rojo
"Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable."
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
RE: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - Carey - 12-31-2008
OK, I found this site has some interesting info on slug & snail repelling, scroll down to the "Java Jive on Slugs & read some interesting research on caffeine against snails & slugs that was done HERE in Hilo!
http://www.plantea.com/slug-baits-coffee.htm
This article has some info on copper sulfate for non aquatic snails & slugs (copper sulfate has been used for over a decade in some ponds, unfortunately there has been some research that shows the buggers can build up a resistance to the aquatic applications..):
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7427.html
RE: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - Chuysmom - 01-01-2009
Carey this article is so useful. We have an endless supply of coffee grounds and will just extend it further to cover our other new trees and plants. Thanks!
Carrie Rojo
"Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable."
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
RE: Preventing meningitis caused by parasites - mella l - 01-01-2009
And the used coffee grounds in the compost pile are advantageous also!
mella l