Woman complained of forgetfulness, depression. Doctors found live worm in her brain

Doctors in Australia found a live worm living inside a woman's brain (Image credit: Centres for Disease Control and Prevention)

A live worm was removed from the brain of a 64-year-old woman who complained of forgetfulness and depression. In the world’s first such case, doctors in Australia discovered an 8-cm parasitic roundworm living in the woman’s brain, according to a report in The Guardian.

The English woman, who was living in New South Wales, Australia, complained of a range of symptoms in 2021 – including abdominal pain, dry cough, diarrhoea and night sweats. The symptoms led to her hospitalisation in January 2021.

However, by 2022, her symptoms evolved to depression and forgetfulness. She was referred to Canberra hospital, where an MRI scan led to the discovery of the live worm in the right frontal lobe lesion of her brain.

The discovery was surprising for the doctors of Canberra hospital and a team was formed immediately to figure out what kind of worm it was and how to remove it.

“The neurosurgeon certainly didn’t go in there thinking they would find a wriggling worm,” said infectious diseases physician Dr Sanjaya Senanayake. “Neurosurgeons regularly deal with infections in the brain, but this was a once-in-a-career finding. No one was expecting to find that.”

Senanayake was pulled into the case when his neurosurgeon colleague called him and said, “Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain – and it’s alive and wriggling.”

“Canberra is a small place, so we sent the worm, which was still alive, straight to the laboratory of a CSIRO scientist who is very experienced with parasites,” Senanayake said. “He just looked at it and said, ‘Oh my goodness, this is Ophidascaris robertsi’.”

Ophidascaris robertsi is a roundworm typically found in pythons. Doctors are not sure how it found its way to the woman’s brain, although they think she might have eaten grass tainted by the snake’s faeces. The woman lives in an area where carpet pythons are common and often collects native grasses to use in cooking.

This is the first case of such a parasite infecting a human. "Human infection with any Ophidascaris species has not previously been reported," the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted.

Six months after the surgery, the woman’s forgetfulness and depression have shown improvement but the symptoms have not disappeared completely.