সহকারী অধ্যাপক
২৯ আগস্ট, ২০২৩ ০৬:৫৭ অপরাহ্ণ
Live worm found in Australian woman's brain in world first
Live worm found in Australian woman's
brain in world first
In a world first, scientists say
that an 8cm worm has been found alive in the brain of an Australian woman.
The "string-like structure" was pulled from the England-born
patient's damaged frontal lobe tissue during surgery in Canberra last year.
The red parasite could have been
there for up to two months, reports BBC.
Researchers are warning that the case highlights the increased danger of
diseases and infections being passed from animals to people.
"Everyone [in] that operating theatre got the shock of their life when
[the surgeon] took some forceps to pick up an abnormality and the abnormality
turned out to be a wriggling, live 8cm light red worm," said Sanjaya
Senanayake, an infectious diseases doctor at Canberra Hospital.
"Even if you take away the yuck factor, this is a new infection never
documented before in a human being."
The Ophidascaris robertsi roundworm is common in carpet pythons - non-venomous
snakes found across much of Australia.
Scientists say the woman most likely caught the roundworm after collecting a
type of native grass, Warrigal greens, beside a lake near where she lived.
Writing in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Mehrab Hossain, an
Australian expert in parasitology, said he suspects she became an
"accidental host" after using the foraged plants - contaminated by
python faeces and parasite eggs - for cooking.
There began what doctors have called an "unusual constellation of
symptoms" of stomach pain, a cough, night sweats and diarrhoea that
escalated into increasing forgetfulness and worsening depression.
The patient was admitted to hospital in late January 2021. A scan later
revealed "an atypical lesion within the right frontal lobe of the
brain". The cause of her condition was only revealed by a surgeon's knife during
a biopsy in June 2022.
She is recovering well despite making medical history.
"The invasion of the brain by Ophidascaris larvae had not been reported
previously," writes Dr Hossain. "The growth of the third-stage larva
in the human host is notable, given that previous experimental studies have not
demonstrated larval development in domesticated animals, such as sheep, dogs,
and cats."
Dr Senanayake - who is also an associate professor of medicine at the
Australian National University (ANU) - told the BBC that the case is a warning.
The ANU team reports that 30 new types of infections have appeared in the last
30 years. Three-quarters are zoonotic - infectious diseases that have jumped
from animals to humans.
"It just shows as a human population burgeons, we move closer and encroach
on animal habitats. This is an issue we see again and again, whether it's Nipah
virus that's gone from wild bats to domestic pigs and then into people, whether
its a coronavirus like Sars or Mers that has jumped from bats into possibly a
secondary animal and then into humans."
"Even though Covid is now
slowly petering away, it is really important for epidemiologists… and
governments to make sure they've got good infectious diseases surveillance
around."