Look away now for those who’re squeamish.
A Greek woman needed to seek medical attention after sneezing bugs out of her nose.
The bizarre ailment, which terrified those that witnessed it, was attributable to a parasitic fly’s larvae.
Doctors removed a whole larval colony from her nose and she or he has since recovered.
They consider she became infected with the bug – Oestrus ovis (Diptera: Oestridae) or the sheep bot fly – because of her close proximity to sheep.
It’s a cosmopolitan parasite in hot and dry regions, including countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Accidental human infestations are rare to unheard of but not unimaginable.
‘The patient was a 58-year-old woman in Greece who worked outdoors on a Greek island, adjoining to a field with grazing sheep,’ Dr Ilias Kioulos, a medical entomologist on the Laboratory of Pesticide Science, Agricultural University of Athens writes.’It was September, during hot and dry weather, and she or he noticed quite a few flies swarming round her face.
‘Roughly one week later, she had onset of progressive maxillary pain, followed over the subsequent two to 3 weeks by severe coughing. She reported no other symptoms.
‘On October 15, she sought medical attention after she sneezed and ‘worms’ began coming out of her nose.’
Kioulos and his team say apart from bugs coming out of your nose there may be little to fret about when it comes to the long-term effects of the parasitical infection.
‘An otolaryngologist surgically removed 10 larvae of assorted stages and one pupa from her maxillary sinusm,’ he added.
‘She was treated with nasal decongestants and made a whole recovery. None of her co-workers reported similar symptoms.’
While the unpleasant condition is rare in humans, it’s fairly common in livestock that go unchecked.
‘The O. ovis life cycle inside its natural hosts, sheep and goats, is well-documented,’ the team said. ‘O. ovis bot flies infrequently affect humans, most frequently depositing larvae within the conjunctival sac and barely into the nostrils, mouth, or external auditory meatus.
‘Essentially the most common clinical manifestation is acute catarrhal conjunctivitis, typically preceded by the sudden sensation of a foreign body.’
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‘The patient we report had a severely deviated nasal septum and appears to have been inoculated with a big larval burden.’ Dr Kioulos said.
‘From a purely anatomic perspective, we hypothesise that the mixture of high larval numbers and septum deviation impeded normal egress from the nasal passages, permitting progression to pupation.’
The situation was unusual, as normally temperature and climatic requirements don’t allow for pupation.
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