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An English woman living in Australia made the history books after medics pulled an 8cm parasitic worm from her brain - where it was “alive and wriggling”.
To add insult to injury, the invader is more usually at home in a snake - and this was the first time it had been found inside a human host.
The 65-year-woman was living in southeastern New South Wales when she was admitted to a local hospital in January 2021, suffering from gut pain, diarrhoea, a dry cough and night sweats.
When doctors could not find a definitive cause for her symptoms, they diagnosed her with pneumonia and sent her home with steroids. She then showed some initial improvement, a dispatch in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s medical journal Emerging Infectious Diseases reported.
But she was back in hospital just weeks later and doctors decided that her immune system was acting against her, prescribing immunosuppressants to deal with the problem.
The 8cm parasite after it was pulled from the woman's brain. Photo / Canberra Health
Canberra neurosurgeon Dr Hari Priya Bandi made the discovery, The Guardian reports, and reported her finding to colleague Dr Sanjaya Senanayake, an infectious diseases specialist.
“Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain,” Bandi said. “And it’s alive and wriggling.”
“Neurosurgeons regularly deal with infections in the brain, but this was a once-in-a-career finding. No one was expecting to find that,” Senanayake said.
Doctors quickly sent the still-wriggling worm off to a scientist with experience in parasites. He picked it out immediately. It was Ophidascaris robertsi - a snake parasite.
New Zealand spinach and snake poo
Ophidascaris robertsi is a roundworm found in pythons - so how did it get inside her head?
Doctors discovered that the woman lived near a lake frequented by carpet pythons and had gathered warrigal greens, also known as New Zealand spinach, from around the lake.
The native plant is found on both sides of the Tasman and can be used in place of spinach in cooking, but the leaves that this woman consumed contained another ingredient.
Snake faeces.
The lesion on the patients's brain (L) and a live third-stage larval form of the parasite seen under stereomicroscope. Photo / Canberra Health
Once the parasite found its way inside her system it got on the move.
“The patient’s clinical and radiologic progression suggests a dynamic process of larval migration to multiple organs,” the dispatch in the medical journal described dispassionately.
In plain English, the little worm had wriggled around her body until it reached her brain.
Doctors reasoned that the immunosuppressants incorrectly prescribed during her treatment may have smoothed its progress into her central nervous system.
With the worm gone and other drugs prescribed to deal with any other parasites that remained, the patient is now on the mend.
“That poor patient, she was so courageous and wonderful,” Senanayake told The Guardian.
“You don’t want to be the first patient in the world with a roundworm found in pythons and we really take our hats off to her. She’s been wonderful.”
