Koi pla is a popular dish in northeastern Thailand. It’s made from finely chopped raw fish, mixed with herbs, a dash of lime juice, and a sprinkling of live red ants. Although devoured regularly by many in the Isaan region of the country, the dish actually harbors a deadly secret: it causes liver cancer.
For a long time now, it’s been observed that people in the region have bizarrely high levels of the disease. It’s thought to account for more than half of all male cancer cases in the region, compared to a worldwide average of around just ten percent. And it’s the little freshwater fishies used in the dish that are the culprit, or more specifically, the fluke worms they’re home to. Doctors in the area are trying to educate people as to the risk koi pla poses, reports BBC News Worldwide, and it seems to be working.
“We have been studying this link in our labs for over 30 years,” Dr. Banchob Sripa from the Tropical Disease Research Laboratory in Khon Kaen University told the BBC. “We found that the liver fluke can make a chemical that stimulates a host immune response—inflammation—and after many years, this becomes chronic inflammation, which then becomes cancer.”