Surgeons found a 3-inch worm alive while working on the brain of an Australian woman. According to them, the worm was still wriggling while it was pulled out.
“It was definitely not what we were expecting. Everyone was shocked,” said operating surgeon Dr Hari Priya Bandi.
For months, the woman who is 64 years of age had suffered symptoms like stomach pain, a cough, and night sweats, which evolved into forgetfulness and depression.
She went to the hospital and she was admitted. Later, a brain scan determined “an atypical lesion within the right frontal lobe of the brain”.
However, the cause of her condition was only revealed by Dr. Bandi’s knife during a biopsy in June 2022. According to the surgeons, the parasite could have been active for a while.
Her case is believed to be the first instance of a larvae invasion and development in the human brain, researchers said in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal which reported the case.
According to the neurosurgeon in charge of the surgery, she felt something just as she began working on the brain.
“I thought, gosh, that feels funny, you couldn’t see anything more abnormal,” said Dr Bandi.
“And then I was able to really feel something, and I took my tweezers and I pulled it out and I thought, ‘Gosh! What is that? It’s moving!”
“Everyone was shocked. And the worm that we found was happily moving, quite vigorously, outside the brain,” she said.
