It was a normal day for infectious disease doctor Sanjaya Senanayake at the hospital in Canberra, Australia, until he received a call from a colleague from a completely different department. It was the neurosurgeon Hari Priya Bandi who said the following: – My God, you will not believe what I found in the brain of a woman. It is alive and moving. The neurosurgeon had just removed an eight centimeter long roundworm from her patient and now she needed advice on what to do next. It is the first time in the world that this particular type of roundworm has been found in a human. Shocked The patient, a 64-year-old Australian woman, came to the hospital for the first time in 2021. Then she had abdominal pain, diarrhoea, fever, cough and was short of breath. Without the doctors finding the cause. – In retrospect, we see that this most likely came from roundworm larvae that moved from the intestine into other organs such as the liver and lungs. Karina Kennedy, director of clinical microbiology at the hospital in Canberra, tells Al Jazeera. From 2022, the woman experienced both becoming forgetful and depressed, which eventually led to an MRI scan of the brain. This is what led the doctors to discover abnormal tissue on the brain. The neurosurgeons at the hospital were shocked when they discovered a roundworm. – Neurosurgeons regularly deal with infections in the brain, but no one expected to find this, infectious disease doctor Senanayake tells The Guardian. The doctors say they were shocked when they discovered this worm Photo: AP Sensasjon The roundworm was still alive when it was operated on and immediately sent on to experts for identification. Then came the next shock. It turned out to be a type of roundworm commonly found in pythons and kangaroos. Scientists believe the woman was infected when she was looking for edible plants near the house where she lives in the state of New South Wales in the south-east of Australia. The plants were probably contaminated with snake feces containing larval parasites. Increased risk There is an increasing risk of disease passing from animals to humans, according to the experts in Australia. – There have been around 30 new infections in the world in the last 30 years. Of the new infections globally, 75 percent have been transferred from the animal world to humans, this includes the coronavirus, says infectious disease doctor Senanayake. The doctor adds that the worm found in the woman’s brain is not of the type that infects other people. It will therefore not cause a pandemic like SARS, Ebola or Corona. But the worm or parasite is found in several parts of the world so it is likely that other cases will appear. Researchers who have studied the case of the Australian woman add that it is likely that the woman had a weakened immune system. Thus, the parasite managed to penetrate an area that is normally very protected. The 64-year-old patient is now out of hospital, but is still being monitored by specialists.
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Lived with a worm in the brain – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
