museum of diseased brains? did you know we can have WORMS in our brain?~heather

museum of diseased brains? you betcha..did you know we can have WORMS in our brain?~heather ***well i sure didn't....and now more than ever..i will WASH those hands before i eat LOL \

By Drew Benson Associated Press Writer Monday, August 26, 2002; 8:29 AM

LIMA, Peru –– Pointing to one of the four natural holes we all carry in our brains, Dr. Diana Rivas explained why some of her patients get headaches only when they move their heads to one side.

She suggests the reason is that parasites camped out in the ventricles bump up against the gray matter only some of the time.

The brain Rivas showed is one of 2,786 at the Neurological Sciences Institute's brain museum, a resource for generations of Peruvian medical students and a popular stop for foreign physicians since brain collecting began in 1947.

"The foreign doctors come to see some of the diseases we have here that aren't so common in other parts of the world," said Dr. Adriana Ciudad, who serves as museum curator.

She says it's Latin America's largest collection of diseased brains.

For those unable to make it to Peru, images of about 700 of the museum's brains will go online in late August. The Web launch coincides with the 302nd anniversary of the institute, which is a short cab ride from Lima's historic Plaza Mayor in the poor, decrepit Barrios Altos district.

In the museum's 10-by-10-foot display room, 230 brains fill lunchbox-sized glass cases of formaldehyde on shelves that run from floor to ceiling along three walls. High in the center of the middle wall hangs an oil painting of Dr. Oscar Trelles, the father of Peruvian neuroscience.

An adjoining "brain library" holds the museum's remaining specimens in 2-liter glass jars of formaldehyde on three shelved walls.

Rivas' favorite specimen is the one with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease – the human form of "mad cow" disease. When medical students dissected it a few months ago, they had to cover the lab with plastic sheeting and don "astronaut" gear to handle the brain, despite its having spent a month in formaldehyde.

"The prion proteins that cause the disease are microscopic and extremely resilient," Rivas said. "Everyone is afraid of that one."

Rivas, a pathologist in her third year at the institute, said examples of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease first appeared in Peru in the 1970s. But the disease – which kills its victims with a rapid onset of dementia after years of incubation – remains rare in Peru, she said.

Other preserved brains at the museum have been attacked by amoebas, fungi, meningitis, tuberculosis and 36 types of brain cancer.

While cerebral fungus and tuberculosis infections are almost exclusively AIDS-related in the United States, Ciudad said tuberculosis often appears solo in Peru.

Pointing to a specimen marked "Microcephalia," Ciudad said she remembered the patient from her early days at the institute in the late 1950s – a 55-year old woman who died with a brain the size of a young girl's.

"If we change the formaldehyde once a year, the brains can last 100 years," Ciudad said.

In addition to tending the displays, Ciudad leads medical students in weekly dissections in an adjacent lab.

Following a 15-minute review of a patient's medical file, a dozen students made their diagnosis. Ciudad lifted the brain – the color of yellowed ivory, purple in the folds – from a white porcelain metal pan and placed it on a worn wooden board.

After a few questions to spot-check the students' anatomy knowledge, Ciudad lifted a blade similar to a foot-long bread knife and slowly, smoothly halved the brain horizontally.

The students had correctly diagnosed the museum's most popular specimen – cysticercosis, a non-intestinal infection caused by pork tapeworm larvae.

Cysticercosis occurs when people ingest tapeworm eggs that hatch into larvae inside the body and swim to various organs and form cysts. While intestinal tapeworms are caused by eating infected pork, cysticercosis occurs when the microscopic eggs are passed from human hosts through contaminated food or water.

Unchecked, the parasites can grow in the brain, leaving it riddled with pencil-wide holes, as seen in many of the museum specimens. The brain damage causes seizures, and cysticercosis is the leading cause of epilepsy in Peru, Ciudad said.

Cysticercosis can be cured with anti-parasite pills in about three months if detected early enough by a blood test. Rivas said that at the institute, about five people a day test positive for the parasite.

Asked by an alarmed American visitor if he should get a blood test, having lived in Peru for more than two years, Rivas said no.

"Not unless you have headaches," she said. "And you always wash your hands before you eat, right?"

As with about 40 of the annual student dissections, the diagnosed brain made the museum's collection.

What made this example worthy of inclusion, Rivas pointed out, was the unusual location of the parasite: inside one of the four natural holes, or ventricles, that we all carry around inside of our brains.

this is a repost, but it might be of interest...if you want to find the pictures..search for the musuem on the net - they're there

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