E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSFor those who need another reason, beyond the ick factor, to not eat raw crawfish, here’s a frightening fact: many of these crunchy crustaceans carry the infinitely more icky lungworms – which can burrow from your digestive tract into your lungs, cheeks, or even your brain.
A new government report describes the cases of nine Missouri folks whose bodies were invaded by the parasitic little flat worms, officially known as paragonimus kellicotti, after gobbling down raw crawfish on a drunken dare.
All nine got infected with paragoniumus between 2009 and 2010. Before that, there had been just seven cases reported between 1968 and 2008, according to the new report published this week in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention journal. Why the upsurge? Turns out that people in the country’s interior like to cool off by rafting down rivers -- which are populated by crawfish. And someone, somewhere, got the brilliant idea to dare a friend to gobble down a live one.
“What we’ve seen is that out on rivers people like to drink and do some things we might not normally do,” says study co-author Michael A. Lane, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the Washington University School of Medicine. “We’ve seen a decent – though still relatively small – number of people eating raw crawfish on a dare after drinking beer.”
If you’re having trouble imagining someone consuming a live crawfish, just type the words “eating raw crawfish” into the search bar on YouTube and you’ll see plenty of people crunching away. Best to do this on an empty stomach.
Scientists have discovered that many of the crawfish in Missouri’s rivers are infected with lungworms. “In some rivers as few as 40 percent of the crawfish had the parasite,” Lane says. “But in others it was as high as 70 percent. So, if you pull a crawfish out of the water, you’ve got a high likelihood of getting one with the parasite.”
The parasites are about the size of a grain of rice when they’re in a crawfish, Lane says. But they can grow as big as a half an inch once they’re inside the human body.
“After you eat the crawfish, the parasite comes out and migrates across the diaphragm,” Lane explains. “They burrow through the walls of the intestine, hoping to make it to the lungs where they can complete their life cycle and mature. Once in the lungs they form nodules that mature and grow. But sometimes they get lost on the way to the lungs and they can end up in other places. One of our patients had one that had gone to the brain. Another had one that had worked its way to the cheek.”
Lane’s study only looked at people who had been seen at his medical center, but Missouri isn’t the only place with hot weather, rivers and crawfish.
“All the pieces of the parasite’s life cycle are found throughout the country,” Lane points out. “There have been animal studies that have found them in Ohio, Colorado, and other places.”
Because of that, Lane suspects there may be even more cases of people out there with paragonimus symptoms – coughing, fever, shortness of breath, high white blood cell count, fluid in and around the lungs - who are being misdiagnosed with anything from tuberculosis to pneumonia to cancer.
And the misdiagnoses may cause more damage than the worm itself. One of Lane’s patients was on the verge of getting treated for cancer because doctors assumed that had to be the problem.
“He’d had multiple procedures for draining the fluid from his lungs – which eventually caused one of his lungs to collapse,” Lane says.
Another patient had a healthy gallbladder removed when doctors couldn’t find any other explanation for his chest pain.
The good news is that there is a very effective therapy. When patients take the medication praziquantel for three days, there is a 100 percent cure rate, Lane says.
The tricky thing is for doctors to first figure out whether a patient has the parasite since there is no good blood test.
“Probably the best diagnostic test we have is to ask the patient if they ate any raw crawfish,” Lane says.
More from Vitals:
Leave a Comment:
I like mine boiled in crab boil with corn, potatoes and an ice cold beer. What kind of idiot would eat one raw?
A really dumb idea to eat raw crawdads. On the other hand, if you check the CDC statistics, you will see that eating raw vegetables and greens has killed an order of magnitude more Americans due to Salmonella and E. coli contamination...that could be prevented by proper production practices.
I think that what should really, scare people more is that Parasitic Invasions are becoming more frequent across this country and the world. The fact that doctors aren't diagnosing these threats appropriately scares the hell out of me as much as the parasites themselves. Also, those who travel to Central and South America, Africa and some Asians countries will find these 'bugs' lurking almost everywhere. With the climates warming, these parasites are also being seen in places further north of their normal range of habitability. Cats, dogs and farm animals can be the source for human parasitic contamination also. So if you find yourself with "Non Specific" symptoms tell your doctor to check for parasitic invasion before the idiot starts Cancer Treatments on you!
I'm not sure why its so hard for people to wash their fruits and veggies before consuming them. All those deaths from the tainted cantalope could have been prevented if people washed them before cutting in to them. They make several sprays that are solely for the purpose of cleaning, and guess what? they're right next to the fruits and veggies! Imagine that, if not, white vinegar just as well.
And why on earth people eat raw crawfish or ANY fish for that matter is absolutely beyond me. Cook your food properly people and you have less chance of getting sick. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Actually, I believe the cantaloupe issue was not solved by washing. That does work for most other fruits and vegetables, though.
On an old episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies", a hippie girl saw Granny beside a river and asked her what she was "smoking", thinking that she was high on something. Granny told her that she was smoking crawdads and she held one up. The hippie girl said, "You smoke THOSE? Far out!" Sixties humor.
Eat raw crawfish? je vais te passer une calotte. Couyon.
really gross! yes the first question to ask is have they eaten raw crawfish before any further tests.
MY GF always sucks the head.
Mine does, too, but then she works on the shaft for a while.
Is that what the article is referring to in its title - "worm might invade your insides"?
"but they can grow to about 1/2 inch once inside the body"
I'm just gonna leave that alone......
Head sucking is ok. As long as the crawfish is COOKED!!! I cannot imagine eating one live, even on a dare and being drunk.
Mmmmmmm Sushi
Dummies. The only crustacean that is even moderately safe to eat uncooked is the oyster.
Hepatitis
Oysters are not crustaceans. They are molluscs.
Ok, no one is mentioning the Quack MD's who start removing body parts or recommend chemo and radiation treatments because they don't know what else to do. They sound like some mechanics I've been to: replace a part and hope that fixes the problem - if not, let's replace something else! Forty years ago on a student trip to Poland, one of us came down with food poisoning. The Polish doctors decided they should remove the guy's appendix - and they would have if the student didn't tell them that he had already had it removed years before. I thought to myself...hmmm...so much for backward socialized medicine. Reading this article, I'm not so sure our doctors are any better...
Of course the doctors here are no better. Medicine has always been more art than science.
Why aren't these sick people, the health insurance companies, and the state governments suing the pants off the alcohol industry, like they did the tobacco industry?
So if you ever get sick with a mysterious illness, you'd rather doctors just shrug their shoulders and send you home to possibly die?
At least they were going to try something. If you actually read the article it says that there's no easy test for this parasite infection, so there wasn't much they could do.
Besides the most obvious part. Telling the truth of what you were doing before you got sick.
Ahhh more smart tips that beer drinkers do. Can't beat a drunk when it comes to brains.
If this is confined to the Red States in the south, don't tell 'em. They mostly can't read, and the ones who can won't believe it cuz them n their kinfolk been eatin' 'em fer years.
How incredibly elitist and racist of you. Well done Warren.
Joke (n):
something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act.
something that is amusing or ridiculous, especially because of being ludicrously inadequate or a sham; a thing, situation, or person laughed at rather than taken seriously.
(v) to speak or act in a playful or merry way
to say something in fun or teasing rather than in earnest
OK, let the Redneck games commence!
As children we used to catch these.But always were smart enough to cook them, along with frogs legs. When the pantry is bare one eats what is available. This was up north though near the Great Lakes area. We had a wise grandmother who taught us much about what we should and shouldn't be using in the woods and rivers. How to prepare things as well that had been passed down from each grandmother. As she had learned from her grandmother. It seems there is much wisdom folks gained from being close to nature that used to be passed down that is now lost because we no longer live in close communion to nature. So we haven't had to depend on that old knowledge for the most part. I did hear of two cases where a couple ate some infected mushrooms they didn't cook. The parasites went to their brains and both died.It served as a reminder to use extreme caution.It isn't always what one sees that can kill you.
I spent four years in Cajun country Louisiana and never came across a single coon ass who ate crawfish raw. And a Cajun would eat just about anything including river rats called a nutria. Crawfish are always boiled. Before anyone calls a racist, coon ass is a Cajun slang which friends call each other.
Yep.
COON ASS is an endearment term.
(oh and a Nutria is called a Nutra-rat)
Careful with that. A non-coon ass calling a country Cajun a coon ass can be taken in a similar manner as a non-black calling a black the n-word. And almost nobody eats nutria. You can get 5 bucks a tail for trapping them though.
Thank you Republicans for turning our beautiful country into a cesspool. Can you all please move to Afghanistan????
Republicans?
And WTF did this have to do with crawfish?
I love liberals when they speak "their minds".
Don't feed the forum troll please.
I know its confusing. Crawfish have an exoskeleton, republicans have no backbone. They do get mistaken for one another. ha ha
Good thing the article mentioned that sometimes when people drink, they do things they normally wouldn't. How many of us didn't know this? ;)
I am sorry but I have seen where these craw fish live and anyone stupid enough to eat one raw deserves the intestinal parasite they get. Something about Darwin comes to mind.
Bet you eat their cousins, lobster and crab though don't you?
I've eaten crawfish but you couldn't get me to eat one raw for a milliion dollars. I don't care how drunk you are you have to be extremely stupid to eat either lobster or craw fish raw.
Catch 'em in Oregon in the same places you catch fish. Used to sit by the campfire on the lake, catch a bunch of crayfish, cook them up and enjoy.
Caught them in high mountain lakes, and mountain streams. Used to be able to drink the water out of those places, wouldn't today. Still, it's real clean water.
What's the problem?
The point is that you cook them.
The cooking part is obvious, it was this that was confusing:
I've certainly posted my share of things that didn't come out right. I'm guessing that is all that happened here.
Meanwhile I'm about ready to eat some Chicken...cooked.
Must have already had worms in their brain to eat crawfish raw.
To the idiot who made a statement about "red states" and rednecks, go suck head.
If you will notice this was done in Missouri, the "show me how dumb I am state".
No Southerner would ever touch raw sushi OR raw crawfish.
I will have to give my regards to the article writer.
And least he used good terminology. "Crawfish, not "Crayfish".
Oh, and pecans are not "PEECANS" either.
You piss in a peecan, you eat a pecan.
I'm more concerned with the red states being parasitic welfare states that suck money from prosperous, educated blue states.
Oh, Now you tell me? Looks like imma need a'noda beer to wash down dem squiggles
They don't squiggle if you cook them correctly.
It takes all the squiggles out of the in a "Yankee Minute".
Bigger problem with eating them is getting stoned to death. Remember what Leviticus says :).
Why in hell would anyone eat those mudbugs RAW?
Well, here's another thing to add to the ol' hypochondriac list. Damn it.
"Invasive Lungworms" will ruin your day....
"Well, as usual, I can't find a damn thing with your $500 dollars worth of blood tests, $1500 MRI, $300 EKG, $600 ultrasound, $1000 CT scan, and $2500 colonscopy.
Oh, have you eaten any raw crawfish?"