Trichinosis - Trichinella Spiralis In Humans

A pig that has been infected with T. spiralis may have thousands of cysts waiting dormant within its muscles—the very muscles that humans look forward to dining on in the form of pork chops, ham, barbecued ribs, etc. When humans sit down to a meal of undercooked, T. spiralis-infected pig dinner, they are ingesting viable T. spiralis cysts. The cyst walls are broken down by the usual process of food digestion in the stomach, allowing the larvae to continue on to the new host's intestine, where the larvae mature to become adult worms, capable of reproducing a new crop of larvae. When these new larvae are born, they begin their migration throughout the human host's bloodstream to the human host's muscles, where they live for a short while before encysting.