For the second time in the history of medicine, a person has become infected with the rare parasite Thelazia gulosa, which turns the eyeball into a breeding ground for worms.
Judging by the fact that the second documented case of infection occurred just 2 years after the first, there is every reason to believe that a new type of zoonoses has appeared in the United States - diseases that both humans and animals suffer from. Scientists from the CDC's Parasitic Diseases Division told the story of a 68-year-old patient from Nebraska who spent her winters in the warmer climate of California's Carmel Valley.
In early February 2018, on a morning run, a very unpleasant event happened to her. The woman accidentally came across a swarm of small flies. “She recalls brushing insects off her face and spitting them out of her mouth,” the researchers explain in their report.
But that was only the beginning.
The next month, the woman noticed irritation in her right eye, and the cause of the discomfort was not long in coming. While flushing her eyes with tap water, she washed out a transparent, movable roundworm about half an inch (1.25 cm) long. And he was not alone. Further examination revealed another worm, which she was also able to extract. The next day, the woman visited an ophthalmologist, who fished out the third and prescribed her an antibiotic ointment, which helps against any bacterial infections.
A few weeks later, she returned home to Nebraska, still feeling constant irritation and “foreign body sensation” in both eyes. Another examination by an ophthalmologist resulted in the diagnosis: moderate bilateral papillary conjunctivitis, but the doctor could not find any worms.
A female T. gulosa worm with eggs and larvae found in the lower left corner.
However, shortly thereafter, the patient discovered and removed the fourth worm from her eye, and fortunately her conjunctivitis disappeared after that. He turned out to be the last, and the patient can consider herself lucky. In a previous case, doctors found 14 worms lurking in the eyes of a 26-year-old patient.
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"The worm has been identified as an adult female T. gulosa," the authors write. This worm mainly infects livestock, but, apparently, does not disdain humans either. Thus, if you are in close proximity to cattle (for example, the patient who visited the farm in the first case, was engaged in horse riding), or you are not lucky to come face to face with a swarm of flies in the countryside (for example, the second patient), you may have a chance of contracting a parasite.
Vasily Makarov