Doctors Remove Live, 'Wriggling' Worm From Woman's Brain
Doctors performing brain surgery on a 64-year-old woman in Australia made a startling, first-of-its-kind discovery when they pulled out a live, wriggling worm.
The incident occurred in June of 2022, but was just published in an article for the Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases this week. The woman was first admitted to a hospital in January 2021 after three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhea, followed by dry cough and night sweats. She was placed on prednisolone, but her medical problems persisted.
Then, after experiencing a three-month period of forgetfulness and worsening depression in 2022, the woman underwent an open biopsy, when doctors found the worm. Her neurosurgeon, Dr. Hari Priya Bandi, a co-author of the study, was shocked to pull a three-inch worm from her patient's brain.
"I just thought: ‘What is that? It doesn’t make any sense. But it’s alive and moving,'" Bandi told The Canberra Times newspaper on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. "It continued to move with vigor. We all felt a bit sick."
"I’ve only come across worms using my not-so-good gardening skills,” Bandi added in an interview with CNN. "I find them terrifying and this is not something I deal with at all."
A live, wriggling worm found in a woman’s brain in Australia last year in a world-first phenomenon was described by infectious diseases physician Dr. Sanjaya Senanayake as something he ‘never expected’ https://t.co/wQyiF9roRu pic.twitter.com/7Kfoum9kLw
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 29, 2023
Upon the stomach-turning encounter, the medical team was in a rush to find answers. They reached out to an animal parasitology expert just 20 minutes away at governmental scientific research agency. "We were able to send the live wiggling worm to him, and he was able to look at it and immediately identify it," said infectious disease expert and Australian National University professor Sanjaya Senanayake, who also worked on the study.
Through molecular tests, they were able to conform that the culprit was a type of roundworm called Ophidascaris robertsi, which is typically found in pythons.
Although the patient did not have any direct contact with the reptiles, she lived near a lake in southeastern New South Wales known to be inhabited by carpet pythons. Researchers believe that she accidentally ingested the roundworm eggs from foraged Warrigal greens she had cooked and eaten.
"To our knowledge, this is also the first case to involve the brain of any mammalian species, human or otherwise,” said Senanayake.
After the worm was removed, the patient was sent home with anti-parasitic drugs following the surgery and she has not returned to hospital since. "She’s done OK, but obviously because this is a new infection, we’re keeping a close eye on her," Senanayake added.