Surgeons Find Worm In Woman’s Brain In World’s First Case

Surgeons discovered a worm residing in the brain of an Australian woman who kept returning to the hospital for a variety of symptoms.

Since 2021, the 64-year-old lady has been treated with steroids and other medications after exhibiting signs of pneumonia, abdominal discomfort, diarrhoea, dry cough, fever, and night sweats.

In 2022, she began to exhibit symptoms of depression and forgetfulness, prompting doctors to request an MRI scan of her brain, which found anomalies that led doctors to prescribe surgery.

“But the neurosurgeon certainly didn’t go in there thinking they would find a wriggling worm,” Dr. Sanjaya Senanayake, an infectious disease specialist in Canberra, told the Guardian.

Senanayake was brought into the medical drama when one of the surgeons called him and said, “Oh my God, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain — and it’s alive.”

The surgical team discovered a 3-inch-long, bright red parasitic roundworm called Ophidascaris Roberts that was living rent-free in the woman’s brain.

The discovery is unusual in that the worm is often found in snakes, not humans. This roundworm is found in carpet pythons, which are a big type of constrictor native to Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea.

The worm was discovered in a human for the first time.

Doctors aren’t sure how a snake parasite got into the woman’s body. She had no direct interaction with snakes, but she lived near a lake, where snakes are common.

The worm’s eggs may have been on some edible grasses known as New Zealand spinach that the woman harvested for cooking, according to experts.

Doctors had to carefully tweak their patient’s meds over several months to treat her symptoms because no person had ever been diagnosed with this parasitic infection before.

“That poor patient, she was so courageous and wonderful,” Senanayake said. “You don’t want to be the first patient in the world with a roundworm found in pythons and we really take our hats off to her. She’s been wonderful.”

This first-of-its-kind illness demonstrates how diseases previously seen only in wild animals are swiftly making their way into human communities. And Ophidascaris worms are found all around the world, including the United States.

“Of the emerging infections globally, about 75% are zoonotic, meaning there has been transmission from the animal world to the human world. This includes coronaviruses,” said Senanayake.

“This Ophidascaris infection does not transmit between people, so this patient’s case won’t cause a pandemic like COVID-19 or Ebola,” he said. “However, the snake and parasite are found in other parts of the world, so it is likely that other cases will be recognized in coming years in other countries.”

Senanayake said: “Neurosurgeons regularly deal with infections in the brain, but this was a once-in-a-career finding. No one was expecting to find that.”