A neurosurgeon at Canberra Hospital reported an unusual case. Hari Priya Pandey wrote that he found a live eight-centimeter worm in the brain of an Australian woman. Watchman.
The patient, a 64-year-old woman, was first admitted to hospital in late January 2021 after complaining of abdominal pain for three weeks, diarrhea with dry cough, fever and night sweats. A year later, his condition continued to deteriorate, as he also developed symptoms of depression and became more forgetful.
He was then sent for an MRI scan of the brain, which showed the worm lurking in his brain.
Neurosurgeons regularly deal with infections of the brain, but no one had ever seen anything like this before. Doctors did not expect to find a worm in the human brain
– said Sanjaya Senanayake, a doctor who deals with infectious diseases at the hospital, who added that previously it was known that roundworms only parasitized animals, mainly snakes, and not humans. The doctor indicated
A patient at a Canberra hospital is the first person in the world to have a worm in his brain.
Senanayake learned that the woman in question lived near a lake where carpet snakes regularly found themselves. Although he did not come into direct contact with the snake, as it often collected weeds from around the lake, it is likely that he picked grass contaminated with the snake’s feces, which also contained parasites. And as soon as the woman ate the herbs, the worm entered her body.
The doctor revealed that the patient is already recovering and is currently being monitored. He added that the task of doctors is not easy, as they must find a treatment for a condition that has not occurred before.
Senanayake said: 75 percent of infections are spread by animals, so care must be taken with them and with the food in their environment. As he said, it is important to wash food from nature well and, if possible, to purify it by cooking.
