![]() ![]() “The other message from this case is about foraging. 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. “This Ophidascaris infection does not transmit between people, so it won’t cause a pandemic like SARS, COVID-19 or Ebola. ![]() And of those emerging infections, about 75% were zoonotic, meaning there has been transmission from the animal world to the human world – including coronaviruses. He said about 30 new infections had been uncovered in the world in the past three decades. So this is just another marker that more new infections will be seen in the future,” Senanayake said. “There’s more opportunities for humans, domestic animals and wild animals to interact with each other and the vegetation that’s out there. Senanayake said the case highlighted the growing danger of diseases and infections passing from animals to humans, especially as people encroach deeper into animal’s habitats. The 64-year-old woman suffered forgetfulness and depression before undergoing brain surgery. The parasite is highly invasive and it is suspected that its larvae, or juveniles, were present in other organs in the woman’s body, including the lungs and liver. In this case, the patient was likely an accidental host of the worm, Senanayake said. At some point, pythons also eat those same infected animals, and the parasite then lives inside the snake, completing the cycle. What normally happens is that carpet pythons in Australia carry the Ophidascaris robertsi and shed parasite eggs in their feces, spreading through vegetation that small mammals and marsupials eat. Several months later, her symptoms developed into forgetfulness and depression and she was sent to a hospital in the Australian capital, where an MRI scan revealed something unusual in the right frontal lobe of her brain. The woman was initially admitted to a local hospital in late January 2021 after suffering three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhea, followed by a constant dry cough, fever and night sweats. The doctors and scientists involved in her case theorized that a carpet python might have spread the parasite via its feces into the greens, which the patient then touched and cross-contaminated with food or other cooking utensils. Although she did not have direct contact with the reptiles, it’s likely she caught the roundworm after foraging Warrigal greens, a native leafy vegetable, which she cooked and ate. Researchers say the patient lived near a lake area inhabited by carpet pythons in southeastern New South Wales. ![]() “To our knowledge, this is also the first case to involve the brain of any mammalian species, human or otherwise,” said Senanayake, who is also a professor at Australian National University. Molecular tests confirmed it was Ophidascaris robertsi, a roundworm usually found in pythons, according to a press release from the Australian National University and the Canberra Hospital. “We were able to send the live wiggling worm to him, and he was able to look at it and immediately identify it,” Senanayake said. One colleague in the hospital lab was able to reach an animal parasitology expert at a governmental scientific research agency just 20 minutes away – and found their unexpected answer. ![]() The finding unleashed a mad scramble to find out what exactly the parasite was, Canberra Hospital infectious disease expert Sanjaya Senanayake told CNN. “I’ve only come across worms using my not-so-good gardening skills … I find them terrifying and this is not something I deal with at all,” Bandi told CNN of the world’s first discovery of a live worm inside a human brain. Hari Priya Bandi was not expecting to pull out a live 8-centimeter (3-inch) long parasitic roundworm that wriggled between her forceps. When a 64-year-old Australian woman was sent to hospital for brain surgery, neurosurgeon Dr. ![]()
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