Oh My Worm: How Australian doctors found and removed a 3-inch live parasite from a woman’s brain

We have all heard and read about cases when doctors have had to remove bizarre objects from the human body. There have been instances when glass has been removed from a person or sometimes even bugs have been extracted from human cavities such as the ear or nose. However, doctors at the Canberra Hospital in Australia have made a name for themselves for removing an eight cm – that’s three-inches-long – living worm from a woman’s brain. You read that right – a living parasite, which had burrowed deep inside the 64-year-old’s brain for over a year. We take a closer look at what happened to the woman, what worm was found and how it got there. The worm case Neurosurgeon Hari Priya Bandi and Canberra infectious diseases physician Sanjaya Senanayake have outlined how they came upon this ‘wormy’ case and how they removed the parasite from the woman’s brain in the September edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. According to the case, the 64-year-old English woman from south-eastern New South Wales was admitted to hospital in January 2021 after three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhoea, followed by a dry cough and night sweats. By 2022, her symptoms had escalated to forgetfulness and depression, so doctors ordered an MRI scan of her brain, which revealed abnormalities that led doctors to recommend surgery. This is when neurosurgeon Hari Priya Bandi entered the case and performed a biopsy through a hole on the patient’s skull at Canberra Hospital last year. Bandi says never in her wildest imagination did she think she would find a parasite inside the brain. “I just thought: ‘What is that? It doesn’t make any sense. But it’s alive and moving,’” Bandi was quoted in The Canberra Times newspaper. “It continued to move with vigour. We all felt a bit sick,” Bandi added of her operating team. **Also read: Florida man dies after using tap water: What is the brain-eating amoeba that killed him?** Dr Sanjaya Senanayake says he was on duty when Dr Bandi removed the worm from the woman’s brain. “I got a call saying: ‘We’ve got a patient with an infection problem. We’ve just removed a live worm from this patient’s brain’,” Senanayake told Australian Broadcasting Corp. He says that 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.” And what they found was a three-inch-long, bright red, parasitic roundworm known to scientists as Ophidascaris robertsi living rent-free in the woman’s brain. [caption id=“attachment_13053722” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] This is the first instance of doctors finding a live worm inside a human’s brain. Ophidascaris robertsi is a roundworm usually found in pythons. AP[/caption] All about Ophidascaris robertsi So, what exactly was this worm that doctors found in the patient? Senanayake and Bandi have told The Guardian that once extracted, they came together to quickly determine what kind of roundworm it was and, most importantly, decide on any further treatment the patient might require. “We just went for the textbooks, looking up all the different types of roundworm that could cause neurological invasion and disease,” Senanayake told The Guardian. Their search was fruitless and they looked to outside experts for help. “Canberra is a small place, so we sent the worm, which was still alive, straight to the laboratory of a CSIRO scientist who is very experienced with parasites,” Senanayake said. “He just looked at it and said, ‘Oh my goodness, this is Ophidascaris robertsi’.” Ophidascaris robertsi is a roundworm usually found in pythons. As per a report in The Independent, its larvae is normally found in small mammals and marsupials, which are then consumed by the pythons. Experts state that the larva continues to grow in the pythons and the worm normally lives in the snake’s oesophagus and stomach and sheds its eggs in the host’s faeces. Experts further added that human beings are accidental hosts of Ophidascaris robertsi larvae. And how did this one worm find itself inside the woman? Doctors have offered some clues to that too. They suspect the woman caught the roundworm after collecting a type of native grass, Warrigal greens, beside a lake near where she lived. They surmise that the worm’s eggs might have been on the grass that the woman collected for cooking. Senanayake has said that the woman is recovering well and is still being regularly monitored. He was quoted as telling The Guardian: “That poor patient, she was so courageous and wonderful. 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.” [caption id=“attachment_13053732” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The worm, Ophidascaris robertsi, found in the woman’s brain is a parasite commonly found in carpet pythons and kangaroos. Image used for representational purposes/AFP[/caption] Lessons to learn Karina Kennedy, Canberra Hospital’s director of clinical microbiology and Associate Professor at the ANU Medical School, told Neurosciencenews.com that there’s an important lesson to learn from this case, a world’s first. She stated that people needed to be more cautious while foraging for food and gardening. “People who garden or forage for food should wash their hands after gardening and touching foraged products. Any food used for salads or cooking should also be thoroughly washed, and kitchen surfaces and cutting boards, wiped downed and cleaned after use,” she told the portal. It’s also important as it reiterates how easily infectious diseases can jump from animals to people. In fact, the authorities at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that three-quarters of new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals. Senanayake also highlighted this point, saying that the world needed to wake up to the dangers of people and animals living closer to one another and habitats increasingly overlapping. “There have been about 30 new infections in the world in the last 30 years,” he told The Guardian, adding, “Of the emerging infections globally, about 75 per cent are zoonotic, meaning there has been transmission from the animal world to the human world. This includes coronaviruses.” With inputs from agencies