WOMAN HAD PARASITIC WORMS IN EYE FOR A MONTH

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

 

Woman feels something lodged in her eye for a month — then doctors find parasitic worms

By Irene Wright

December 05, 2024 12:03 PM

 

In the bustling city of Beijing, China, a 41-year-old woman would leave her home shared with her pet cat and head to work in an office.

 

But in the summer of 2022, her day was interrupted by the feeling that something was stuck in her right eye.

 

The woman headed to Peking University Third Hospital that July to report the feeling, and doctors noticed some damage to the inner lining of her upper eyelid, according to a medical case report published Nov. 28 in the journal BMC Ophthalmology.

 

Doctors used a slit lamp, or the contraption seen at ophthalmology offices where you rest your chin on a bar and look into the light, to get a closer look at her eyeball, according to the report. Other than redness, nothing else looked wrong, and they didn’t see anything stuck in her eye that could be causing the weird feeling.

 

She was prescribed eye drops to keep her eyes moist and antibacterial drops, each taken multiple times per day, doctors said.

 

Weeks later, nothing had changed.

 

“She returned to the hospital in August, reporting itching, redness and foreign body sensation in her right eye for one month,” doctors said.

 

Doctors numbed the eye and pulled back the eyelid again, according to the report.

 

The sac that lubricates the eye and acts as a barrier between the eye itself and the outside world, the conjunctival sac, was congested, doctors said, and a small lesion was growing.

 

Then, four white worms were found on either side of the eye sac, according to the report.

 

“The worms were sent for laboratory examination. The entire worm demonstrated the typical slender and elongated body shape. The (back) end of the worm displayed a buccal capsule (a feature of the mouth used to take up food), a distinctive feature of Thelazia callipaeda,” doctors said.

 

The woman may have contracted the parasite from her household cat (not pictured), doctors said, but she refused to have the cat tested.

 

Thelazia are a group of nematodes and veterinary parasites that can occasionally infect humans, called a zoonotic infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

The parasite larvae are typically ingested by a flying insect where inside they grow to full size, and then are spread to animals like dogs, cats, livestock and in some cases, humans, the CDC says.

 

Just like in people, the parasite can cause an eye infection in animals, and humans who regularly interact with animals, particularly in rural communities, can sometimes contract the parasite that way, according to the CDC.

 

“The patient’s medical history was reviewed after identifying the worms. She could not recall recent exposure to flying insects but noted her cat had an eye disease,” doctors said. “Pathological examination of the cat was not performed as the patient refused.”

 

A Thelazia infection, called Thelaziasis, can “cause mild to severe signs and lesions, such as foreign body sensation, itching, tearing, eye pain, conjunctival bleeding, conjunctivitis, corneal ulcers and even blindness,” doctors said.

 

The woman underwent a deep rinse of her conjunctival sac and was given a new prescription for eye drops, according to the report. The worms did not return.

 

T. callipaeda, the species that infected the woman, can be found across Asia and much of continental Europe, the CDC says. A related species, T. californiensis, has appeared in the western United States, but health officials are still unsure of its total range. T. gulosa, another related species, is found widely across Asia, Europe, North America and Australia.

 

Peking University Third Hospital is in central Beijing, in northeastern China. The medical team includes Shumei Tan, Pei Zhang, Fanshu Li, Yingyu Li, Ziyuan Liu and Xuemin Li.