When a one-year-old girl is admitted to a hospital in China, the girl shows motor abnormalities and an enlarged head – a little later the doctors discover that this is a medical phenomenon as rare as it is disturbing: a parasitic twin had become trapped in the head of the implanted child.
A fetus was discovered in the year-old’s head, which was eventually surgically removed, as reported by the journal “Neurology.” The phenomenon is called “fetus in fetu” and is extremely rare: only a few hundred such cases are known worldwide. It involves inserting one or more fetuses into another.
Parasitic twins can grow
In a computed tomography, the fetal-like containment in the one-year-old Chinese became clearly visible – you can see finger-like bones in it. A parasitic twin cannot survive on its own, but can grow larger in the body of those affected and develop different cell types, which can pose a health risk.
Experts estimate that one in 500,000 births is to parasitic twins.
A case of “fetus in fetu” in a baby became known only last year: in India, a 21-day-old girl had a particularly noticeable bulging belly. She eventually had to have eight fetuses surgically removed from her body.
Source: Krone
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