Neurosurgeon Hari Priya Bandi removes live worm from woman's brain

The patient had gone into hospital after complaining of pains in her stomach. She had diarrhoea, a cough that wouldn't go away and a fever. The patient was experiencing forgetfulness and depression.

With all these symptoms, doctors at the hospital did a scan and saw an abnormal part of her brain. A second scan revealed some movement or growth so they decided to operate to explore.

In they went, cutting the skull and probing the brain with a medical instrument similar to a spoon. When they hit a harder part, they inserted a forceps.

And out came the very alive worm, about eight centimetres long (about the span of a hand, tip of the thumb to tip of the first finger).

"I just thought 'What is that? It doesn't make any sense but it's alive and moving'," the neurosurgeon Hari Priya Bandi said.

"It continued to move with vigour. We all felt a bit sick. I've never been involved like that before," Dr Bandi said. "It pulled out like an earthworm but a third of the thickness of an earthworm."

Apart from amazement in the operating theatre, doctors also witnessed a moment of medical history.

They consulted experts in worm parasites and learnt that this particular type was normally found in carpet pythons. Its scientific title is Ophidascaris robertsi roundworm.

In other words, a parasite which normally thrived inside a snake had transferred to a human (in this case, a woman from south-east NSW who has decided not to be identified).

The discovery was so ground-breaking that the doctors have written it up and published it in one of the world's leading medical journals.

"This is the first-ever human case of Ophidascaris to be described in the world," Professor Sanjaya Senanayake of the ANU said.

He's an expert on infectious diseases and one of the authors of the article in the learned journal. Another is the neurosurgeon who pulled the worm out, Dr Bandi. Both work at Canberra Hospital.

It's not certain how the woman ended up with the worm in her brain.

One theory is that she was foraging among grass for a wild spinach known as Warrigal greens - and a python had dropped the worm's eggs in its droppings in the grass, The woman had then either inadvertently picked the eggs up on her hands or used the grasses for cooking.

"The patient used the Warrigal greens for cooking and was probably infected with the parasite directly from touching the native grass or after eating the greens," the researchers say.

The discovery excites scientists because more and more humans are developing illnesses from animals (zoonotic, as scientists call the process) - like COVID which came from bats.

Professor Senanayake said this passing of diseases to humans was becoming more common because we increasingly live more closely together as humans intrude on animal habitats.

"There have been about 30 new infections in the world in the last 30 years. Of the emerging infections globally, about 75 per cent are zoonotic. This includes coronaviruses," he said.

Unlike COVID, this parasite doesn't make the human carrier a danger to other people.

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But it does mean that now more cases like this may be spotted.

"The other message from this case is about foraging," Professor Senanayake said. "People who forage should wash their hands after touching foraged products. Any foraged material used for salads or cooking should also be thoroughly washed."

The patient is still being monitored by the medical team.

"I can't state enough our admiration for this woman who has shown patience and courage through this process," Professor Senanayake said. "It is never easy or desirable to be the first patient in the world for anything."

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