--- title: "Doctors Stunned to Find a Live Worm Inside a Patient’s Brain" description: "A group of Aussie neurosurgeons got the surprise of their lives when they discovered a live worm inside their patient's cranium. " date: "2023-08-30" modified: "2023-08-30" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/neoscope/doctors-live-brain-worm" categories: - "Brain" - "Health & Medicine" tags: - "brains" - "neurosurgery" - "parasites" - "roundworms" --- # Doctors Stunned to Find a Live Worm Inside a Patient’s Brain ![A group of Aussie neurosurgeons got the surprise of their lives when they discovered a live worm inside their patient's cranium. ]() *\Image: DeAgostini via Getty Images / Futurism\* While investigating a mysterious brain lesion, a group of Aussie neurosurgeons got the surprise of their lives when they discovered a *live freaking worm* inside their patient's cranium. In [an interview with the *BBC*](), a Canberra, Australia brain surgeon described the gruesome scene that unfolded during what would otherwise have been a routine procedure — but which instead became what researchers are now calling a world-first. The eight-centimeter-long red worm was discovered in the brain of a 64-year-old woman last year, as described [in the journal *Emerging Infectious Diseases*](), after a long bout of strange symptoms that ranged from abdominal pain and diarrhea to night sweats and depression. After being initially treated for pneumonia in early 2021, the patient's condition did not fully improve, and by the summer of 2022, with all other options exhausted, her doctors found a strange lesion on a brain scan and finally decided to open her head up. Dr. Hari Priya Bandi, the woman's surgeon, said that she felt the roundworm before seeing it while biopsying her brain. "I thought, gosh, that feels funny, you couldn't see anything more abnormal," Bandi said. "And then I was able to really feel something, and I took my tweezers and I pulled it out and I thought, 'Gosh! What is that? It's moving!'" Everyone in the operating room was, as the neurosurgeon described, "shocked" by the worm that was "happily moving, quite vigorously, outside the brain." What's worse, researchers believe it may have been fully developed inside her brain for up to two months before they finally pulled it out. https://twitter.com/HIVDocSK/status/1696426869678391316 Known as *Ophidascaris robertsi*, the red roundworm found inside the woman's brain is most often seen in carpet pythons, which the *BBC* notes are non-venomous and found all over Australia. The scientists who studied the strange case believe that the woman became an "accidental host" after foraging some Warrigal greens, a type of edible wildlife that's also popular with pythons. Those greens, parasitologist and main study author Mehrab Hossain wrote, could easily have had snake feces on them, thus contaminating the woman. Hossain notes in the paper, that this kind of actual living brain worm has, until now, "not been reported" — and as Dr. Sanjaya Senanayake, an infectious disease expert who consulted with Bardi after the initial discovery of the worm, tells the *BBC*, this incredible finding doesn't bode well. "It just shows as a human population burgeons, we move closer and encroach on animal habitats," Senanyake said. "This is an issue we see again and again, whether it's [Nipah virus]() that's gone from wild bats to domestic pigs and then into people, whether it's a coronavirus like Sars or Mers that has [jumped from bats]() into possibly a secondary animal and then into humans." "Even if you take away the yuck factor," the epidemiologist added, "this is a new infection never documented before in a human being." And in this case, as with COVID-19, that novelty definitely is not a good thing. **More on parasites:** [*Scientists Surprised by DNA in Worms That Control Hosts' Brains*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()