This is a shocking moment doctors discover a 10-cm long parasite living in a man’s brain after he was told to eat live frogs to help his bad back.

The patient, identified as Mr Ai, turned up at the local hospital in one of the four direct-administered municipalities of Shanghai in the People’s Republic of China after he was diagnosed with epilepsy.

The man had suffered another attack and the neurosurgery on-duty doctor Liu Jiaqi was afraid that the patient might have a tumour so decided to do a CT scan.

Doctors then carried out the tests as requested, and were shocked to discover that he had a parasite living in his brain that was causing the condition.

After questioning the man about how it could have got there, he admitted that he had been eating live frogs after being advised by a neighbour who said it would help treat his bad back.

Staff at the southern neurosurgery team of Shanghai First People’s Hospital who diagnosed the problem have now carried out a minimally invasive surgery to remove the parasite that was causing the secondary epilepsy.

They believe that the parasite, identified as a Schistosoma mansoni, ended up in the man’s frontal lobe after he was infected by the frogs.

One of the doctors said: “They probably made their way from the man’s mouth directly to his brain.”

The diagnosis and removal of the worms appears to have been correct as the man has not suffered any further epileptic attacks, which had been getting increasingly worse presumably as the worm started to expand.

His wife said: “He had actually been suffering from epilepsy for quite a time, and it was getting worse but the real problem had not been diagnosed. He was seen by various hospitals but it was only during the last diagnosis that they found the parasite with a CT scan after initially expecting it might be a tumour.”

The Deputy Chief Physician Xue Yajun told reporters that the “culprit” responsible for the epilepsy was finally taken out.

According to Xue Yajun, the parasite is the Schistosoma mansoni which is parasitic in animals such as frogs and snakes in nature.

“It can however be passed on to people when a person eats raw or under-cooked frogs, snakes or snails.”

He said that from the initial infection, where the parasite fastens onto the intestinal wall, through to infection in the brain can take several years.

She said the neighbour that was well versed in local folk remedies had suggested eating frogs to cure the man’s bad back.

The medics repeated the warning not to eat raw meat without first cooking it.