2023-08-28 19:12:47
Magnetic resonance imaging of the patient shows a lesion in the anterior lobe.
Image: CDC
For the first time ever, doctors have successfully removed an “ophidascaris robertsi” from a patient’s brain. Of course in Australia – where else? The worm had reached a length of eight centimeters.
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A 64-year-old Australian went into medical care in January 2021 with various symptoms. A problem in the brain was diagnosed during magnetic resonance imaging. During the operation, the doctors removed an 8-centimetre-long worm. Only external experts classified it as « Ophidascaris robertsi», a roundworm that has never been identified in humans. The patient may have been infected via snake faeces. She’s on the mend.
“Oh my god, you’re not going to believe what I just found inside this lady’s brain – alive and kicking.”
With these words, Dr. Hari Priya Bandi her colleague Dr. Sanjaya Senanayake startled. Bandi is a neurosurgeon at the hospital in Canberra, Australia, and her colleague Senanayake is a specialist in infectious diseases in the same hospital.
Her 64-year-old patient first presented to a local hospital in her home state of New South Wales in January 2021, complaining of abdominal pain and diarrhea, followed by a dry cough, fever and night sweats.
However, the medical profession there might not find the cause. Because the problems not only persisted, but also because of forgetfulness and depression, she was referred to the larger hospital in Canberra in 2022.
“No one expected to find this”
MRI scans revealed problems in the patient’s brain that required surgery. “But the neurosurgeons certainly didn’t expect a wriggling worm,” Senanayake explains to the British «Guardian».
The living roundworm under the microscope magnified tenfold.
Image: CDC
The doctor explains: “Neurosurgeons normally deal with infections in the brain, but that was a discovery that you only make once in your career. Nobody expected to find that.” The was in this case a three-inch roundworm that put a question mark on the faces of everyone in the operating room.
“We looked straight into the textbooks and went through the different types of roundworms that can cause a neurological disease,” says Senanayake. Because they mightn’t find anything, external experts had to be consulted.
“My goodness, that’s Ophidascaris robertsi”
“Canberra is small,” says Senanayake, “so we took the worm, which was still alive, straight to the lab of a specialist in the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation sent, who knows regarding parasites. He looked at the creature and said, ‘My goodness, that’s it Ophidascaris robertsi.›»
The roundworm, which was still alive, was sent to the experts: it was identified as “Ophidascaris robertsi”.
Image: CDC
“Ophidascaris robertsi” has so far only been found in snakes: it is the first time that the parasite has been detected in humans. The patient lives in an area where the diamond python is native. Although she had no direct contact with the animals, she kept collecting wild New Zealand spinach for cooking.
The doctors now speculate that she might have been infected by the feces of the diamond python in the grass. “The poor patient,” says Senanayake, “she was so brave and wonderful. You don’t want to be the first patient in the world to have this roundworm found in her brain.”
Voilà: a diamondback python (Morelia spilota).
Bild:
Commons/Benchill
On top of that, the woman also because of larvae needing treatment, which may have lodged in the liver, but is said to be recovering well. Incidentally, contagion of other people is not possible, concludes the “Guardian”.
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