In a world first, scientists say an 8 cm (3 in) worm has been found alive in the brain of an Australian woman.
The “string-like structure” was pulled from the damaged frontal lobe tissue of the English-born patient during surgery in Canberra last year.
The red parasite could have existed for up to two months.
Researchers are warning that the case highlights the increased risk of diseases and infections passing from animals to humans.
“Everyone (in) that operating room got the shock of their lives when (the surgeon) took some forceps to grab an abnormality and the abnormality turned out to be a live 8cm red worm,” said Sanjaya Senanayake, an infectious disease doctor at the Hospital of Canberra.
“If you take away the disgust factor, this is a new infection never before documented in a human being.”
The roundworm Ophidascaris robertsi is common in carpet pythons, non-venomous snakes found throughout much of Australia.
Scientists say the woman most likely got the worm after picking a type of native grass, Warrigal greens, near a lake near where she lived.
Writing in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Mehrab Hossain, an Australian expert in parasitology, said he suspects she became an “accidental host” after using forage plants – contaminated by python faeces and parasite eggs – for cooking.
There began what doctors called an “unusual constellation of symptoms” of stomach pain, a cough, night sweats and diarrhea that escalated into increasing forgetfulness and worsening depression.
The patient was admitted to hospital in late January 2021. A scan later revealed “an atypical lesion within the right frontal lobe of the brain”. The cause of her condition was only discovered by a surgeon’s knife during a biopsy in June 2022.
She is recovering well despite her medical history.
“Invasion of the brain by Ophidascaris larvae has not been previously reported,” writes Dr Hossain. “The growth of the third-stage larva in the human host is remarkable, given that previous experimental studies have not demonstrated larval development in domesticated animals such as sheep, dogs and cats.”
Dr Senanayake – who is also an associate professor of medicine at the Australian National University (ANU) – told the BBC the case is a warning.
The ANU team reports that 30 new types of infections have emerged in the past 30 years. Three quarters are zoonotic – infectious diseases that have passed from animals to humans.
“It just shows that as the human population grows, we come closer and encroach on animal habitats. This is an issue we see again and again, whether it’s the Nipah virus that has jumped from wild bats to domestic pigs and then to humans, or whether it’s a coronavirus like Sars or Mers that’s jumped from bats to a secondary animal and then to the people.”
“Even though Covid is now slowly going away, it’s really important for epidemiologists … and governments to make sure they have good infectious disease surveillance.”
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