Molecular tests confirmed it was Ophidascaris robertsi, a roundworm usually found in pythons, according to a press release from the Australian National University and the Canberra Hospital.
Canberra: Doctors removed a 3-inch-long live parasitic worm from an Australian woman’s brain, the world’s first discovery of a live worm inside a human brain, according to CNN. An ANI report in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says
Dr Haripriya Bandi, a neurosurgeon, said, “I have come across worms only while using my not-so-good gardening skills. I find them terrifying and this is not something I deal with at all.”
The neurosurgeon, who performed brain surgery on a 64-year-old Australian woman, said she was not expecting to pull out a live 8-centimetre-(3-inch)-long parasitic roundworm that wriggled between her forceps.
The finding triggered curiosity in everyone to find out what exactly the parasite was, Canberra Hospital infectious disease expert Sanjaya Senanayake told CNN.
A hospital lab colleague was able to contact an animal parasitology expert at a government scientific research agency and found their unexpected answer.
Molecular tests confirmed it was Ophidascaris robertsi, a roundworm usually found in pythons, according to a press release from the Australian National University and the Canberra Hospital.
To our knowledge, this is also the first case to involve the brain of any mammalian species, human or otherwise, said Senanayake, who is also a professor at Australian National University.
According to researchers, the patient lived near a lake area inhabited by carpet pythons in south- eastern New South Wales. Although she did not have direct contact with the reptiles, it’s likely she caught the roundworm after foraging Warrigal greens, a native leafy vegetable, which she cooked and ate.
The doctors and scientists theorised that a carpet python might have spread the parasite via its faeces into the greens, which the patient then touched and cross-contaminated with food or other cooking utensils.
Initially the Australian woman was admitted to a local hospital in late January 2021 after suffering three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhoea, followed by a constant dry cough, fever and night sweat.
Her symptoms later developed into forgetfulness and depression and she was sent to a hospital in the Australian capital, where an MRI scan revealed something unusual in the right frontal lobe of her brain.
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