Life Cycle
The life cycle involves humans as a definite host and pigs as an intermediate host. Pigs ingest contaminated food or water that contains eggs or proglottids from human feces. The eggs (ova) develop into cysticerci in pig muscles. Humans become infected when they ingest raw or undercooked pork that contain viable cysticerci. Upon reaching the small intestine, the scolex attaches to the intestinal wall and a proglottid chain grows. T. solium releases three to six proglottids/day, bearing 30,000 to 70,000 eggs per proglottid into the intestine. Nearly 250,000 ova are passed daily into the human feces and to the environment, and the cycle continues. Infections with cysticercus occur after humans consume the ova from exogenous sources or through self-infection via the fecal-oral route. Humans, in this case, are intermediate hosts. Ova are digested in the stomach and release oncospheres which penetrate the intestinal wall and reach the bloodstream. These oncospheres develop into cysticerci in any organ but are common in brain, subcutaneous tissue, or eyes.
Read more about this topic: Cysticercosis
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or cycle:
“His meter was bitter, and ironic and spectacular and inviting: so was life. There wasnt much other life during those times than to what his pen paid the tribute of poetic tragic glamour and offered the reconciliation of the familiarities of tragedy.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald (19001948)
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”
—Lewis Mumford (18951990)