25/11/2025
Jesus christ!😳💔
A neurosurgeon carried out a remarkable and unprecedented procedure, successfully removing a live, 8-centimeter-long worm from a woman’s brain.
The extraordinary case, reported last month by scientists, involved a 64-year-old woman from Australia whose brain biopsy revealed a moving parasite—a discovery never before documented in humans.
During surgery, the neurosurgeon used forceps to extract the worm from a lesion visible on the MRI scan. “I used tumor-holding forceps and unexpectedly lifted out a thin, squiggling structure,” the surgeon recalled. “My junior doctor initially thought it was an artery, but I pointed out that we were nowhere near one. When I noticed it moving, I immediately asked for it to be removed from my forceps. We placed it into a pathology container—and it was still vigorously wriggling.”
The woman had initially suffered weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhea, followed by night sweats and a persistent dry cough. Over time, her symptoms worsened, progressing to forgetfulness and depression—likely caused by the worm’s activity in different parts of her brain.
The parasite was identified as Ophidascaris robertsi, a rare species of roundworm typically found in carpet pythons. These worms usually complete their life cycle between snakes and small mammals: the snake’s f***s contain worm eggs that contaminate grass, small mammals ingest the eggs, and the snakes then consume those mammals.
In this case, the woman became an accidental host. Living near a python habitat, she had foraged for native vegetation for cooking and likely ingested the eggs unintentionally. The parasite developed in her intestines and eventually migrated through her bloodstream to the brain.
The body’s immune response to the worm triggered inflammation, forming a granuloma in her brain tissue. Depending on the area affected, such inflammation can cause a wide range of neurological symptoms—headaches, vomiting, blurred vision, confusion, sensory disturbances, seizures, or cognitive problems like memory loss, disorientation, and difficulty understanding or calculating—resulting from pressure and irritation of the surrounding brain regions.
Dr. Ravishankar Kumar
