Diagnosis

If a fox tapeworm is suspected, a blood test and imaging procedures are often performed. The blood can be searched for antibodies, which are only present if contact with the parasite has occurred. Therefore, there is no specific value that can be determined in a standard blood test.

Instead, immunological blood tests are used to make certain antibodies visible. For further diagnostics imaging methods are used because the fox tapeworm can infect numerous internal organs, especially the liver. Depending on their size, infected liver foci can be identified by ultrasound examination of the abdomen.

If abnormal areas are detected, additional imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used. Echinococcosis is often a chance finding because an ultrasound/CT/MRI examination of the abdomen was performed for another reason. It is rather difficult to differentiate between dog and fox tapeworms by means of blood tests. A histological examination of surgical material makes a differentiation possible.

Associated symptoms

The incubation period (=time between infection and appearance of the first symptoms) is 5 to 15 years. So it often takes a very long time until the first symptoms appear. After ingestion, the ingested eggs can reach various organs via the bloodstream.

Most often the liver is affected, but spleen, gall bladder and bile ducts, lungs and brain can also be affected. Here the eggs are spread by budding cysts. The infection of other organs can occur via the blood, there is talk of metastasis.

This term is usually used to describe the spread of malignant cancer cells via the blood or lymphatic system to other organs. This is because echinococcosis resembles a malignant cancer in its pattern of spread. Untreated, it leads sooner or later to death.

The formation of cysts and their spread via the bloodstream often causes no symptoms. Infection of the liver can be accompanied by unspecific upper abdominal pain, one of the most common symptoms of alveolar echinococcosis.Even after many years, the other possible symptoms are rather unspecific: fatigue, tiredness, increased tiredness, abdominal pain, weight loss and jaundice (yellowing of the skin due to bile stasis). It can lead to secondary diseases such as inflammation of the bile ducts, sepsis, portal vein hypertension with its complications (see below), thromboses, inflammation of the kidneys up to loss of function (glomerulonephritis), liver failure up to liver failure and embolisms.