An 8cm worm has been removed from the brain of a 64-year-old woman in an Australian hospital, reports The Guardian.
A script worthy of Dr. House. Infectious disease surgeon Hari Priya Bandi removed an 8 cm parasitic worm that had been in the brain of one of her patients, a 64-year-old woman, for several months, our colleagues from The keeper And Canberra Times.
A patient from southeastern Australia contacted local doctors in late January 2021 after three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhea followed by a persistent dry cough, fever and night sweats.
Many symptoms
A year later, she developed new symptoms, memory loss and depression, prompting her to go to a hospital in Canberra, Australia’s capital. He underwent an MRI of the brain, which revealed “an anomaly requiring surgery.”
“A neurosurgeon certainly didn’t expect to find a writhing worm,” Sanjaya Senanayake, a physician who specializes in infectious diseases, tells The Guardian.
“Neurosurgeons usually deal with infections of the brain, but this happens once in a career. Nobody expected this,” he continues.
First time in humans
The worm in question, 8 centimeters long, was analyzed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the Australian government’s research agency, in a laboratory.
This is “Ophidascaris robertsi”, “a parasitic species, known in particular for its ability to settle inside pythons, but which has never been found in humans before,” our colleagues summarize. Release.
How was such a transfer possible? The patient lives near a lake where pythons are numerous. Although she was never bitten, postponing scripts for later Last of usThe 64-year-old woman often gathered herbs and plants around the lake, including tetragonium horn, which she used in cooking.
Australian doctors suspect she was infected with one of these plants, which may have been infected by a parasitic worm through the host python’s feces. After brain surgery, the patient had to be treated to eliminate potential larvae that might be in other parts of her body.