DOCTORS were shocked to discover a woman’s painless lump in her eye was actually a parasite that comes from snakes. The 28-year-old, from the Congo, Africa, didn’t complain of any pain, but noticed that the lump had grown considerably over the last two years....CONTINUE READING
The parasite removed the corner of a woman’s eye Amazed medics spotted the parasite , which measured half an inch, squirming around in the corner of her left eyeball and pulled it out.
Tests on the creature revealed that the woman had been suffering from a rare eye infection called ocular pentastomiasis, which is caused by a parasite which lays its eggs in snakes.
The bug, also known as a tongue worm, can be passed onto humans who have close contact with infected snakes or if they eat undercooked meat.
In this case, the woman assured medics she had never eaten or handled the reptiles.
“However, she was used to eating crocodile meat,” her doctors wrote in JAMA Ophthalmology.
“No case of ocular infection has ever been reported in individuals who eat crocodile meat, but crocodiles can be infected by pentastomids.”
“Therefore, there’s a possibility the infection happened when the woman ate crocodile meat containing parasite eggs.
“This meat could also have been contaminated via infected snake meat on a market stall,” the doctors added.
Pentastomiasis is a rare infection most commonly seen in Africa, Malaysia, and the Middle East.
Most of these infections cause no symptoms and so go unrecorded.
If the bug migrates to the eye, it can cause eye pain, glaucoma and even total vision loss.
In some cases, the parasites can cause organ perforation, extreme immune reactions and death.
Treatment for the infection involves surgically removing the parasites.
If doctors simply kill the larvae with antiparasitic drugs, the grubs’ carcasses can set off a dangerous immune response in the body, the report authors wrote.
To prevent the infection, hygiene measures, such as wearing gloves, washing hands when in contact with reptiles and avoiding eating undercooked reptile meat, are recommended.
The doctors said medical practitioners should be on the lookout for other cases.
“Ophthalmologists should consider the diagnosis in patients coming from endemic countries,” where this rare disease is known to occur, the doctors wrote.
“Higher awareness for this rare but sometimes heavily symptomatic disease seems warranted.”
It’s not uncommon for doctors to have to remove weird objects from unsuspecting places in the human body.
Here are some examples:
A 43-year-old Indonesian man was left in agony after shoving a toothbrush up his ***
One unlucky woman from Northern Ireland was impaled by a pole after she fell onto her Christmas tree – and still lives to tell the tale
An Iranian man who was taken to hospital with constipation had shoved a full bottle of water around the size of 250ml up his rectum
A patient from China, known only as Mr Wen had a seven-inch long glass bottle removed from his rectum after he inserted it into himself to “scratch his itchy backside”
A boy suffering tummy pain was found to have 31 magnetic balls shoved up his *** – and lodged in his bladder
