It’s a beautiful evening, maybe a family cookout or a special meal after a hunting trip. Everyone’s enjoying the delicious food, especially that perfectly grilled pork or venison. But then, a day or two later, your stomach starts to churn. You feel…off. This is sometimes how an unwelcome guest called trichinosis can make its presence known. It’s a bit of a mouthful, so some folks call it trichinellosis too.
What Exactly is Trichinosis?
So, what are we talking about here? Trichinosis is a type of food-borne illness. It’s caused by a tiny parasite, a kind of roundworm called Trichinella. These little worms, or rather their larvae (their young ones), can be hiding out in raw or undercooked meat.
When you eat meat that’s unfortunately carrying these larvae, your stomach acid and enzymes, which are great at breaking down food, also break down the little protective shell, or cyst, around these larvae. This frees the worms. These adult worms then get busy in your intestines and produce more larvae. These new larvae don’t just stay put; they travel through your bloodstream and like to settle into your muscles and other body tissues. Anyone can get trichinosis; it doesn’t matter how old you are or how healthy you generally feel.
You know, while it’s found all over the world – estimates are around 10,000 cases globally each year – we’ve actually seen a big drop in the U.S. Back in the 1940s, we’d see about 400 cases a year. More recently, say between 2011 and 2015, that number was down to about 16 cases per year. That’s largely thanks to better awareness about cooking meat properly. Still, it’s something we need to be mindful of.
What Puts You at Risk for Trichinosis?
The main ways people unfortunately encounter trichinosis are pretty specific:
- Eating raw or undercooked pork products. This is the classic one.
- Consuming raw or undercooked meat from wild animals. Think deer, moose, elk, wild boar, bear, even walrus. Some birds can carry it too.
- Not storing meats properly.
- Cross-contamination in the kitchen – maybe using the same unwashed cutting board or utensils for raw meat and then for other foods.
Tummy Troubles and Beyond: What Are the Symptoms?
The tricky thing about trichinosis is that symptoms can be all over the map, from barely noticeable to quite severe. And they often come in two stages.
Early Symptoms (a few days after infection):
These usually start within a few days after the worms have entered your system. You might feel:
Later Symptoms (starting about 2 weeks later):
About two weeks after eating the infected meat, and sometimes lasting for several weeks, a new set of symptoms can appear as the larvae settle into your muscles. These can include:
- Muscle soreness and aches – this is a big one.
- Fever
- Headaches
- Swelling around your eyes – this can be quite distinctive.
- Chills
- Feeling incredibly tired
- More diarrhea or sometimes constipation
- A persistent cough
- A rash or itchy skin
These later symptoms can hang around for five to 45 days. Often, milder cases of trichinosis get mistaken for the flu or some other common bug.
In really tough cases, trichinosis can cause more serious problems like:
- Trouble with coordination and movement
- Inflammation of your heart muscles (we call this myocarditis)
- Serious difficulty breathing
- Inflammation in your brain (known as encephalitis)
And in very extreme, rare situations, it can even be fatal.
One question I get asked is, “Is it contagious?” Good news here: trichinosis isn’t something you can pass on by coughing or sneezing. It’s an infection you get from food. However, there’s some evidence suggesting that if a pregnant person has trichinosis, they might be able to pass the infection to their baby.
How Do We Figure Out if It’s Trichinosis?
If you come into the clinic feeling unwell, especially with some of those later symptoms, and you mention you’ve eaten pork or wild game recently, that definitely gets my attention. To diagnose trichinosis, we’ll look at a few things:
- Your signs and symptoms, of course.
- Your history – specifically, if you’ve eaten meat that might have been a bit underdone.
- Blood tests. We might see high levels of a particular type of white blood cell called eosinophils, which can be a clue.
- Later on, we can do other blood tests to look for antibodies your body makes to fight off Trichinella. These don’t show up right away, so we might test again if the first one is negative but we still suspect it.
We generally don’t use stool samples to diagnose trichinosis. And very, very rarely, if things are still unclear, a muscle biopsy (taking a tiny piece of muscle tissue to look at under a microscope) might be considered.
Treating Trichinosis: Getting Rid of Those Worms
If you’ve eaten raw or undercooked meat and you’re starting to show symptoms, please don’t wait it out – give your doctor a call. The sooner we start treatment for trichinosis, the better. While some mild cases might clear up on their own, some untreated cases can become quite serious.
Here’s what we might do:
- Anti-parasite medications: Drugs like mebendazole or albendazole are prescribed to get rid of the worms. If you can start these within the first three days of being infected, they can often stop the infection before it really gets into the muscles and causes bigger problems.
- Pain relief: For the muscle aches and pains, over-the-counter medications like nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can help.
- Steroids: In some cases, especially if there’s a lot of inflammation, we might prescribe steroids.
What if Trichinosis Isn’t Treated? Potential Complications
If trichinosis isn’t treated, especially in more severe cases, it can lead to some serious issues. The larvae can cause inflammation and damage to:
- Your heart, potentially leading to an irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia) or even heart failure.
- Your brain, which could result in seizures.
- Your lungs, causing severe breathing problems.
- In rare instances, it can be fatal.
Even with treatment, some folks might experience long-term problems with their eyes, muscles, or nerves. It really depends on how severe the infection was.
Feeling better can take time. It might be weeks, or even a couple of months, before you’re completely back to your old self after a bout of trichinosis. Most people do make a full recovery, which is the good news. The outlook is a bit more guarded for those very severe cases that involve heart or brain damage.
Staying Safe: How to Prevent Trichinosis
This is the most important part, because you absolutely can reduce your risk of getting trichinosis. You can’t tell if meat has these parasites just by looking at it – they’re microscopic. But here’s what you can do:
Cook Your Meat Thoroughly:
This is key, especially for pork and wild game.
- Always use a food thermometer. And wash it with soap and water after each use!
- Pork: Cook to an internal temperature of 160°F (71°C).
- Game meat (like deer, elk, bear): Cook to 165°F (74°C).
- Game birds (like turkey, duck, pheasant):
- Whole birds: 180°F (82°C).
- Parts (breasts, thighs), or if stuffed: 165°F (74°C).
Freezing Can Help (Sometimes):
- For pork that’s less than 6 inches thick, freezing can kill the worms. You’d need to freeze it for:
- 20 days at 5°F (-15°C)
- 10 days at -10°F (-23°C)
- 6 days at -22°F (-30°C)
- Important note for wild game: The Trichinella species in wild game can be very resistant to freezing. So, for wild game, thorough cooking is your best defense – don’t rely on freezing alone.
Kitchen Hygiene:
- Always wash your hands with soap and water before and after handling raw meat.
- Keep raw meat separate from other foods.
- Clean cutting boards, knives, and any surfaces that raw meat touches very well with hot, soapy water.
What Doesn’t Work:
It’s a common misconception that salting, smoking, or drying meat (like for jerky) will kill Trichinella cysts. Unfortunately, that’s not reliable. In fact, some recent cases of trichinosis in the U.S. have been linked to improperly prepared jerky.
Key Things to Remember About Trichinosis
Here’s a quick rundown of the must-knows:
- Trichinosis comes from eating raw or undercooked meat, especially pork and wild game, infected with Trichinella roundworm larvae.
- Symptoms can start with tummy upset (nausea, diarrhea) and progress to muscle pain, fever, and eye swelling.
- Diagnosis often involves talking about your symptoms, food history, and blood tests.
- Treatment with anti-parasite medication is most effective when started early.
- Prevention is your best tool: cook meat to the right temperature (use a thermometer!), and practice good kitchen hygiene. Freezing pork can help, but don’t rely on it for wild game.
Don’t Hesitate to Reach Out
If you develop any of those symptoms, especially a few days or weeks after eating pork or wild game that you’re not sure was fully cooked, please make sure to contact your doctor. Try to remember when your symptoms started and what you ate. And if you are being treated for trichinosis and you’re having any side effects from medication that are bothering you, let us know. You’re not alone in this, and we’re here to help you figure things out and get you feeling better.