A group of surgeons removed a live intestinal worm, nearly three inches long, lodged in the brain of a 64-year-old Australian woman.
Hari Priya Bandi, one of the surgeons involved in the case, said that she didn’t expect to find a worm in a person’s brain because it never happens, making this case the first in history.
“I only came across worms because I wasn’t that knowledgeable about gardening… They look scary to me, and I don’t bother with them at all,” Bandi told CNN.
The doctors immediately investigated what type of parasite it was. They discovered it was Ophidascaris robertsi, which is common in diamondback pythons, a species endemic to Australia.
According to medical reports, the woman was hospitalized in January 2021 after suffering from abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, cough and breathing difficulties for several weeks.
Doctors conducted several studies without finding larvae or other types of virus that caused the symptoms. In 2022, he developed memory problems and depression, so he underwent an MRI scan.
Images of the woman’s brain showed an atypical lesion in the right frontal lobe, upon examination they found it to be an 8-centimetre-long intestinal worm.
How did an intestinal worm get into a woman’s brain?
The worm found in the female’s brain normally resides in the diamond python’s stomach and excretes it from her body in the feces.
Experts believe the woman picked up native grass where the snake shed the parasite. They added that these parasite cases are not transmitted from person to person, so an “adventitious host” is assumed.
Because of this case, doctors remembered the importance of washing food to avoid all kinds of diseases from parasitic infections.
