A patient who came into a Brazilian hospital with a cough had the shock of his life when it turned out to be spiralling tapeworm larvae.

Dr Vitor Borin P. de Souza, a practitioner at the Hospital das Clínicas Botucat in São Paulo, shared the horrifying X-ray on Twitter, the MailOnline reported.

Dr de Souza said the patient had come in for help with his persistent cough.

But it turns out he was suffering from cysticercosis, a condition where tapeworm larvae that typically call people’s intestines home wriggle elsewhere.

The condition, also called taeniasis, can be caused by a lot of different tapeworms, but only the Taenia solium, also called the pork tapeworm, causes major health problems, according to the World Health Organisation.

Usually, the measuring tape-shaped worm will chow down on someone’s intestines and cause only no to mild symptoms, like stomach pain and diarrhoea.

Humans can become infected with cysticercosis if they digest food, such as undercooked pork, with the eggs of the tapeworms inside.

The parasitic larvae form hard lumps around themselves called cysts to survive – though, not for that long – which can be felt through the skin.

While the condition is usually harmless, the larvae can exit the intestine and travel elsewhere, such as crashing into people’s eyes, lungs, brains and spinal cord.

Dr de Souza shared an X-ray of the patient, showing him covered in countless white dots each representing a cyst caused by the tapeworm larvae.

He said: ‘Cysticercosis is acquired from ingestion of tapeworm eggs (present in the faeces of humans with tapeworms).

‘Don’t want to (catch) it? Wash your food well before consuming.’

In the since-deleted Twitter thread, Dr de Souza said the patient was awaiting an MRI scan to check for the location of a cyst in his brain.

Neurocysticercosis sees cysts develop in the brain and causes, among other things, epileptic seizures, dementia and blindness in what one expert called the ‘most common parasitic disease of the human nervous system’.

‘If you don’t have any injury inside the head, spinal cord or eyes, you don’t even need to treat,’ Dr de Souza said, as quoted by the MailOnline.

‘These lesions are calcified so they are not viable cysticerci (tapeworm larvae).’

About 2,500,000 people are thought to be infected with neurocysticercosis each year, the WHO says.

But the figure could be as high as 8,300,000, often becoming a blight for rural farming communities in lower-income regions of Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.

Taenia solium is the cause of 30% of epilepsy cases in endemic regions where pigs tend to roam. This can swell to as much as seven in 10 cases for high-risk communities, the WHO adds.

‘Although 70% of patients with epilepsy could lead a normal life if treated correctly, poverty, ignorance of the disease, inadequate infrastructure in health or lack of access to medication, cause 75% people with this condition to be treated poorly, if treated at all,’ the agency said.

Cysts can sometimes take months or even years to develop after the ingestion of tapeworm eggs.

But tapeworms are, generally speaking, not much to worry about. The cysts can usually be removed easily through surgery or through anti-parasitic drugs.

‘If it doesn’t cause any discomfort,’ Dr de Souza said, ‘life goes on.’

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