• Health The rat lungworm, capable of causing meningitis, is already in the peninsula

Several Australian media have brought to light a curious medical case that occurred between 2021 and 2022. At that time, a woman was admitted to the hospital in Canberra (Australia) with depression, memory loss, cough, vomiting, night terrors and stomach pain. After deciding to operate on her, doctors removed an 8-centimeter live worm from her brain, something that had never been recorded before.

The surgery was performed after he was diagnosed with "an atypical lesion in the right frontal lobe of the brain," says Sanjaya Senanayake, an infectious disease specialist at the medical center. "Everyone in that operating room suffered the shock of their life when the surgeon took forceps to remove an abnormality and the anomaly turned out to be a live, light red, 8 cm worm that was twisting. Even if the disgusting factor is eliminated, it is a new infection never before documented in a human being," he adds.

"She became an accidental host," explains Mehrab Hossain, an Australian expert in parasitology. This is because this type of brain worms are common in a type of python native to Australia and the woman became infected after consuming herbs that she collected herself and that must contain python feces. In those stools there were larvae of this parasite, which as has been documented for the first time, lodged and developed in its brain, where the animal has lived for about two months.

Dr Senanayake, who is also an associate professor of medicine at the Australian National University (ANU), says more and more new infections are occurring from contact with animals that we invade into their habitat.

"You just notice that as the human population grows, we get close and invade animal habitats. This is a problem we see over and over again, whether it's the Nipah virus that went from wild bats to domestic pigs and then to people, or whether it's a coronavirus. like Sars or Mers that has jumped from bats to possibly a secondary animal and then to humans," he explains.

  • Australia
  • Infectious diseases