Worm Found Wriggling In Woman’s Brain
A surgeon performing a biopsy in Australia was shocked to pluck a wriggling worm from her patient’s brain. Neurosurgeon Hari Priya Bandi was investigating the patient’s mysterious symptoms when she happened upon the 3-inch parasite, which she extracted with forceps.
“I just thought: ‘What is that? It doesn’t make any sense. But it’s alive and moving,’” Bandi told the Canberra Times. “It continued to move with vigor. We all felt a bit sick.”
Yeah, we can understand that. The squirming worm was identified as the larva of an Australian native roundworm (Ophidascaris robertsi) commonly found in carpet pythons, but never before seen in humans.
The patient, a 64-year-old woman, had been admitted to the hospital last year after experiencing forgetfulness and depression over three months. Physician Sanjaya Senanayake believed a brain biopsy would reveal a cancer or an abscess.
Nope, it revealed a worm. It is believed the woman picked up the parasite while collecting a native grass called Warrigal greens near a lake near where she lived, a spot also inhabited by carpet pythons. She likely ate foraged greens tinged with python feces and parasite eggs. Yum.
It was shocking that the worm found purchase in a human brain because labs have previously tried to use domesticated animals – sheep, dogs, and cats – as hosts for this particular worm but failed.
“It just shows as a human population burgeons, we move closer and encroach on animal habitats,” says Senanayake. “This is an issue we see again and again, whether it's Nipah virus that's gone from wild bats to domestic pigs and then into people, whether it's a coronavirus like Sars or Mers that has jumped from bats into possibly a secondary animal and then into humans.”
Since the thing was removed the woman’s symptoms have persisted but improved; her doctors say she is doing okay. Bandi and Senanayake have since co-authored an article about the bizarre medical case, just published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Photo credit: Canberra Health
