A Mystery Worm Infection in Vietnam Shows a New Species Can Live in Humans

The thriller over a worm infestation present in a Vietnamese man final yr has been solved, although not with out including one other creepy wrinkle to the story. The worms inside the person weren’t the Guinea worm (Dracunculus medinensis), a now-rare parasite getting ready to eradication, as initially thought. Instead, they have been a associated and unknown species of Dracunculus seemingly native to the realm. Whether this different worm poses any present or future menace to people remains to be unclear.

In June 2020, media retailers in Vietnam reported on the unusual case of a 23-year-old man who had visited a hospital with abscesses alongside his limbs and neck. Doctors ultimately found and pulled out 5 grownup worms, every round 1 to 2 toes lengthy, from the person’s wounds, in addition to larvae. The man was given antiparasitics and no additional infestations have been reported.

At the time, a health care provider on the case was quoted as saying that the person appeared to have Guinea worm disease, which might have been an alarming discovery for a number of causes. In the Nineteen Eighties, tens of millions of individuals all through Asia and Africa contracted these excruciating and typically completely debilitating infections yearly. But many years of grueling public well being work have pushed the worm to close extinction save in just a few choose areas of Africa. (In 2020, solely 27 instances have been reported in whole.) Despite some setbacks these days, it’s hoped that by 2030, Guinea worm would be the second human pathogen ever absolutely wiped out, following smallpox. So to search out the Guinea worm hundreds of miles away from its final identified vestiges, and in an space the place it’s by no means been found, would have raised some critical issues.

Outside consultants who spoke to Gizmodo on the time have been skeptical that this actually was Guinea worm. Adam Weiss, director of the Guinea Worm Eradication Program on the Carter Center, a human rights group based by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, even talked about the distinct risk that the person’s infestation was brought on by one other species of Dracunculus. And that idea was proper on the cash.

Earlier this March, the docs behind the case published their report within the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. Following the person’s therapy, they despatched off samples of the worm to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for genetic testing, which confirmed that it wasn’t D. medinensis. But past that, the thriller deepens.

Like many parasites, totally different members of Dracunculus infest totally different major species. D. medinensis is the one identified worm to particularly starvation for human hosts, as an example, and there are different species that go after mammals and reptiles. The docs concluded that the person’s worms bore a better bodily resemblance to reptile-loving worms than to any human and mammal worm. But just a few Dracunculus species have had their genes studied up shut, and the analyzed worm didn’t match as much as any of those species. It’s attainable that the worm might belong to a species already found however not genetically sequenced, however for now, its identification remains to be a query mark.

Another lingering thread left to be pulled at is whether or not this incident was a one-off occasion or the primary indicators of an rising illness within the space. Dracunculus worms have their preferences, however they do sometimes soar the species barrier—a capability that’s truly stymied the Guinea worm eradication effort in recent times, because the worms have began to infest canines in sure areas. And there have been suspected instances of different non-Guinea however Dracunculus human infestations sporadically reported in elements of Asia over time.

So simply because this unknown worm might not often decide on people, that doesn’t preclude the likelihood that it sometime might. We additionally don’t know the way the worms even ended up within the man’s physique, although the main theories are that he both drank water contaminated with contaminated copepods (small crustaceans which might be a part of the worms’ life cycle) or ate contaminated uncooked fish.

“The natural hosts and route of exposure of this presumably zoonotic Dracunculus [species] have yet to be resolved and warrant further investigation and surveillance for similar cases in humans and animals in the region,” the authors wrote.

In an accompanying editorial, infectious illness researchers Martin Grobusch and Thomas Hänscheid laid out the quite a few unanswered questions and cautioned towards being too optimistic that this case was a uncommon occasion, a minimum of not with out extra investigation.

“However, it does not appear to be too far-fetched to propose that we might be dealing with one of nature’s curiosities rather than the advent of a novel emerging helminth pathogenic to humans,” they wrote.