Australian doctors have found a live parasitic worm in a woman's brain in a world-first discovery.
In a new study published on Tuesday, researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) and Canberra Hospital detailed the discovery of the parasitic roundworm.
The eight-cm Ophidascaris robertsi roundworm, which is usually found in pythons, was pulled from the patient, a 64-year-old woman, still alive and wriggling after brain surgery.
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Sanjaya Senanayake, a leading infectious disease expert from ANU and the Canberra Hospital, said in a media release that it was a world-first.
According to the study, the patient was admitted to a local hospital in south-east New South Wales (NSW) in 2021 after three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhea.
In 2022, after she started experiencing forgetfulness and depression, a neurosurgeon at Canberra Hospital identified an abnormality in the right frontal lobe of the brain from an MRI scan, prompting the surgery that discovered the roundworm.
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The study hypothesizes that the patient was probably infected by touching, or eating, native grasses that a carpet python had shed the parasite into.
She remains under monitoring by infectious disease and brain experts.