Lack of postmortem digestion of tapeworms in Golden hamsters experimentally infected with Taenia solium.

Taenia solium causes human neurocysticercosis, a public health problem in Mexico and other developing countries. Surprisingly, tapeworm carriers are very rarely found and in necropsy studies practically no tapeworms have been reported. In this paper we analyze the possibility that, after the death of the host, tapeworms could easily be destroyed in the intestine. Our experiments, performed in the hamster model, suggest that the absence of tapeworms in human intestine during necropsy is not due to postmortem digestion.