Articles

Monitoring treatment of Taenia solium- neurocysticercosis by detection of circulating antigens: a case report

Rodríguez-Hidalgo, Richar; Carpio, Arturo; Van den Enden, Erwin; Benítez-Ortiz, Washington

Background
Parenchymal neurocysticercosis is a frequent cause of seizures in areas endemic for Taenia solium. At present there is scarce data on the evolution of the levels of circulating metacestodal antigen before, during and after treatment with anthelmintic drugs.


Case presentation
A patient with paucisymptomatic neurocysticercosis (NCC) diagnosed by Ag-ELISA, and confirmed by MRI images, was treated with praziquantel, albendazole and dexamethasone. The level of circulating T. solium antigen was determined weekly. Circulating antigen disappeared from his blood within 14 days after the start of the treatment and correlated with the involution of the cysticerci in the brain shown by imaging. Seventeen years later, the patient has not shown any side effect nor symptoms related to the treatment or to NCC.


Conclusions
If this encouraging finding is confirmed in a larger series of patients, this technique could be used to determine parasitological cure after treatment and might complement or sometimes replace sequential MRI-imaging of the brain.

Files

  • thumnail for 12883_2019_Article_1282.pdf 12883_2019_Article_1282.pdf application/pdf 579 KB Download File

Also Published In

More About This Work

Published Here
September 22, 2023

Notes

Neurocysticercosis,
Taenia solium
, Treatment, Albendazole, Praziquantel