A Mistaken Diagnosis of Secondary Glioblastoma as Parasitosis

Background: Glioblastoma is a malignant brain tumor with poor prognosis requiring early diagnosis. Secondary glioblastoma refers to cases that progressed from low-grade glioma. Evidence shows that timely resection correlates with increased survival. Case presentation: We describe a case of a patient with secondary glioblastoma who was mistakenly diagnosed with Angiostrongylus cantonensis infection until 7 years after disease onset. The patient presented with non-specific clinical manifestations at disease onset. A conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the primary survey provided insufficient information, and thus failed to identify the malignancy. During follow-up, unfortunately, clinicians were misled by the patient's raw food diet, a positive serum parasite antibody and a result of low glucose metabolism on Fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography-computed tomography (FDG-PET-CT). The patient was diagnosed with parasitosis. However, his condition kept getting worse under antiparasitic treatment. Preoperative magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) failed to reverse the mistaken impression. Final diagnosis was confirmed until intraoperative and postoperative pathological findings indicated glioblastoma. Conclusion: We ascribe the incorrect diagnosis to insufficient understanding on imaging manifestations of brain neoplasm as well as clinical features of parasitosis. Thus, we review the MRI, FDG-PET-CT, MRS, and DTI data of this case according to the timeline, refer to relevant studies, and point out the pitfalls. With a long course of slowly progressing, this was a rare case of secondary glioblastoma with the absence of isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) gene mutation.