It’s the first time the snake parasite has been seen in a human, let alone a brain.

  • sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Its not a snake. Its a roundworm that infect snakes usually.

    A neurosurgeon in Australia pulled a wriggling 3-inch roundworm from the brain of a 64-year-old woman last year—which was quite the surprise to the woman’s team of doctors and infectious disease experts, who had spent over a year trying to identify the cause of her recurring and varied symptoms.

    the roundworm was one known to infect snakes—specifically carpet pythons endemic to the area where the woman lived—as well as the pythons’ mammalian prey

  • sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    One thingI hate about doctors sometimes is that even when they dont know what is causing your illness they still give u some medication anyway. Read this:

    She was diagnosed with an unexplained case of pneumonia and given a corticosteroid, prednisolone.

    Fast forward towhemn they figured out her condition:

    The prednisolone, an immunosuppressive drug, may have inadvertently helped the worm migrate and get into the central nervous system.