Thelazia gulosa: US woman becomes first human infected with parasitic eye worm
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/eye-worm-thelazia-gulosa-first-human-case-abby-beckley-oregon-a820775
Abby Beckley, a 26-year-old from Oregon, felt an itching sensation in her eye for more than a week before she pulled a half-inch (1.27 cm) long worm out of her own eyeball, researchers said.
Confused – and worried she might go blind – Ms Beckley went to a local doctor, who fished out two more worms. An ophthalmologist found three more.
Eventually Ms Beckley wound up at the CDC, where researchers identified the parasite as a member of the Thelazia family. Over the course of 20 days, Ms Beckley and her doctors pulled 14 of the worms out of her eye, according to a report published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
"They weren’t able to remove them all at once. They had to remove them as they became present and visible,” Richard Bradbury, a CDC researcher and lead author of a case report on the event, told CBS.