A woman in Russia found a modest clod on her face , and what it work out to be will leave all hypochondriacs stir .
After spending some time in a rural orbit of Russia outside Moscow , the 32 - class - honest-to-goodness noticed a small , secret puffiness underneath her center . It was slightly fretful , but otherwise seemed like nothing to worry about .
What chance next will quite literally make your hide crawl – within a few days , the lump had moved above her heart . From there , it made its way to her upper rim . Unsurprisingly , she went to the doctor – but not before taking some selfies to document the lump ’s movement .
Kind of horrifyingly , the lump twist out to be a parasitic louse be under the skin on her font . The worm , which goes by the tricky name ofDirofilaria repens , is circularise by mosquito chomp , which she report suffering from on her slip .
Thankfully , the handling was simple – the doctors removed the insect surgically , and the woman made a full recuperation . A case write up detailing her experience is published inThe New England Journal of Medicine .
Although it is rare for the sponge to infect humans – it course live in dogs and other carnivores – there are by all odds enough recorded casing to make you uncomfortable . In 2009 , a German homo end up in hospital after five weeks of headaches and difficulties with speech and motor functions – symptoms usually consort with a stroke . A physical exam discover a lump that had actuate from his arm to the back of his hand , which turned out to be – you gauge it – a massive worm crawling around under his skin .
The most common symptom of aD. repensinfection in humans is lumps on the eubstance , or what researchers describe slenderly gruesomely as “ a spirit of ' crawling ' under the skin ” . In about 35 percent of type , these lumps move around as the louse migrates through the tissue paper under your skin .
The bad news show is that the number of human cases is increase – and spreading . Between 1997 and 2012 the number of recorded case increased from eight to over 200 per class , and people are being infected at higher and higher latitude . However , luckily , these louse can almost never reproduce in humans , and all symptoms unremarkably disappear quickly if the dirt ball is removed – so if you ’ve noticed any strange lout moving around your body after a mosquito bite , you should belike get to a medico .
