One eye of a man was infested by a worm, so doctors sucked the eye juice

Here’s something to remind you that things could always be worse. A case study this month documents a man whose eye has become infested with a parasitic worm.

Doctors in India detailed the horror tale of the real body in the New England Journal of Medicine last week. The man was afflicted by a parasitic round generally found in cats and dogs. Worse still, in order to recover the worm, the doctors must have literally sucking the juice of the man’s eyes.

According to Nejm’s report, the 35 -year -old man had been dealing with eight months in redness and blurred vision in his left eye before visiting a local ophthalmology clinic. Physical examination of doctors quickly showed an inflammation extended in the eyes, while a more in -depth examination revealed a corrugated worm “moving slowly” in the back.

The doctors withdrew the worm via a Vitrectomy Pars Plana, a procedure in which the glassy humor of the internal jelly of the eye is siphoned. Once the worm is outside the body, they identified it as Gnathostoma spinigerumA parasitic nematode with a complex life cycle.

These verses are poop like eggs by carnivorous mammalus hosts like cats. If they find themselves in fresh water, they hatch and the larvae infect the small crustaceans called copépods. If these copépods are eaten by appropriate secondary hosts like certain fish or frogs, the larvae will continue to develop. And if these hosts are then consumed by a final third host as cats, worms will mature completely, mate and lay eggs ready to be poop again. (Sing it with me: “It’s the circle of life.”)

Humans (and other animals such as ducks), however, are accidental dead ends. If we eat infected meat and subcuction containing the worms, they will infect us but will never become full-fledged adults. This infection is called gnathostomiase, and it is the most frequent in the regions of the world where raw fish are a common delicacy, including Japan, Thailand and Mexico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Once inside the human body, worms can migrate almost anywhere and arouse problems. Most infestations end up near the surface of the skin, which is still not a picnic (worms can cause recurring swelling episodes while stirring under the skin). They can also travel more deeply in our organs, including the brain and eyes.

All well considered, the man was lucky because the eye gnathostomiase can cause a loss of vision. He was given a steroid lesson to lower the inflammation of the eyes, which ultimately resolved. But he did not escape unscathed either. The vision of his left eye remained altered (acuity 20/40) due to a cataract which was probably caused by the elimination of worms, because the cataracts are the most common complication of a pars plana vitrectomy.