Australian doctors have found a live parasitic worm in a woman’s brain in a world-first discovery, according to a new study published on Tuesday.

Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) and Canberra Hospital detailed the discovery of the parasitic roundworm.

The eight-cm Ophidascaris robertsi roundworm, usually found in pythons, was pulled from the patient, a 64-year-old woman still alive and wriggling after brain surgery.

In a media release, Sanjaya Senanayake, a leading infectious disease expert from ANU and the Canberra Hospital, said it was a world first.

According to the study, the patient was admitted to a local hospital in southeast New South Wales (NSW) in 2021 after three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhoea.

In 2022, after she started experiencing forgetfulness and depression, a neurosurgeon at Canberra Hospital identified an abnormality in the brain’s right frontal lobe from an MRI scan, prompting the surgery that discovered the roundworm.

The study hypothesises that the patient was probably infected by touching or eating native grasses that a carpet python had shed the parasite into.

She remains under monitoring by infectious disease and brain experts.

(Xinhua/NAN)