Doctors reported a highly unusual case of infection by a parasitic fly in a 58-year-old Greek woman.
He worked outdoors on a Greek island. Suddenly, she felt pain around the center of her face that got progressively worse. About two to three weeks after this pain began, he also developed a severe cough.
Shortly after that, the unexpected happened: “worms” came out of your nose when you sneezed.
The 58-year-old Greek woman was scared and went to the middle school – says .
Despite the case report, in March Emerging Infectious Diseasesdoes not describe how the patient was examined, says that writhing creatures were removed from her maxillary sinuses, the large sinuses located on the sides of her nose.
The bodies included 10 larvae and one pupa (the insect life stage between the larval and adult stages).
After extraction, experts closely examined two of the larvae and part of a puparium, the pupa’s protective outer covering in which it matures into an adult. One larva was pale yellow and about 15 millimeters long, while the other was light brown and had 20 millimeters in length. The puparium was black and wrinkled, and contained traces of the pupa, they said.
The puparium and the remains of the pupa.
The team visually examined the larvae and extracted DNA for analysis. The worm-like creatures were larvae of the sheep nose fly (Oestrus sheep).
This parasite is typically found in the nasal passages and sinuses of sheep and goats. Interestingly, the outdoor area where the woman works is next to a field with grazing sheep, the report’s authors wrote.
Rare case of nasal myiasis O. sheep
Infections caused by parasitic flies are generally known as “miías”as a result of which the woman was diagnosed with “nasal myiasis due to O. sheep with pupation”.
In addition to surgically removing her larvae and pupa from her breasts, the woman received nasal decongestants and had a “complete recovery”.
Human cases of miiase O. sheep have been reported in the past, but these infections typically affected the eyes rather than the nasal passages.
As Live Science writes, historically, it was thought that O. sheep it failed to develop for long in humans, only reaching the first larval stage, known as L1. However, in recent cases, more advanced larvae, including L2 and L3, have been identified. Pupation, the point at which larvae mature into “teenagers,” follows the L3 stage.
“The patient we report had a severely deviated nasal septum and appears to have been inoculated with a large larval load,” the report reads.
“From a purely anatomical perspective,” the authors hypothesize that the high number of larvae combined with the woman’s deviated septum prevented these larvae from exiting her nose. This allowed the larvae to progress to the L3 stage and, in one case, pupation, they concluded.
