Woman’s mystery illness turns out to be 3-inch snake parasite in her brain
Enlarge / Detection of Ophidascaris robertsi nematode infection in a 64-year-old woman from southeastern New South Wales, Australia. A) Magnetic resonance image of patient's brain by fluid-attenuated inversion recovery demonstrating an enhancing right frontal lobe lesion, 13 * 10 mm. B) Live third-stage larval form of Ophidascaris robertsi (80 mm long, 1 mm diameter) removed from the patient's right frontal lobe. C) Live third-stage larval form of O. robertsi (80 mm long, 1 mm diameter) under stereomicroscope (original magnification *10). (credit: Emerging Infectious Diseases)
A neurosurgeon in Australia pulled a wriggling 3-inch roundworm from the brain of a 64-year-old woman last year-which was quite the surprise to the woman's team of doctors and infectious disease experts, who had spent over a year trying to identify the cause of her recurring and varied symptoms.
A close study of the extracted worm made clear why the diagnosis was so hard to pin down: the roundworm was one known to infect snakes-specifically carpet pythons endemic to the area where the woman lived-as well as the pythons' mammalian prey. The woman is thought to be the first reported human to ever have an infection with this snake-adapted worm, and it is the first time the worm has been found burrowing through a mammalian brain.
When the woman's illness began, "trying to identify the microscopic larvae, which had never previously been identified as causing human infection, was a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack," Karina Kennedy, a professor at the Australian National University (ANU) Medical School and Director of Clinical Microbiology at Canberra Hospital, said in a press release.