A Moving Lump in a Woman’s Face Turned out to be A Live Worm! View Pics of Migrating Dirofilaria Repens

Finding a worm crawling around in your face? Well, this is something which you would never want to happen to you. You wouldn't mind a pimple on your face for a lifetime as compared to having a worm underneath your skin. A Russian woman was left quite surprised after she noticed a small lump under her left eye. She clicked a selfie to record such unusual swelling, but something even stranger happened—the lump moved. In a series of pics, she tracked as it moved across her face. After she visited an ophthalmologist it turned out that the moving lump was a parasite known as Dirofilaria repens.

At first, she noticed the lump under her left eye. Five days later, it migrated to above her left eye and then after 10 days, it crawled to her upper lip. Yes, the pictures are actually terrifying. The 32-year-old woman (name has not been released) said that the lump felt a little itchy and burned at times but otherwise, it did not really trouble her. After two-week  of putting up with the moving bumps, she finally met an ophthalmologist. Her unusual lump became a case study in The New England Journal of Medicine by two leading professors from Russia and Spain—Migrating Dirofilaria repens. The report revealed that soon after the removal of the worm, the patient had a full recovery.

Pictures of Migrating Dirofilaria Repens

A physical examination showed a superficial moving along the lump. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dirofilaria repens is a type of long, thin parasitic roundworm that enters through mosquito bites. After learning about the parasitic worm, the Russian woman recalled that she travelled to a rural area outside Moscow and was frequently bitten by mosquitoes.

Dirofilaria repens mostly affects dogs and other carnivores such as cats, wolves, foxes or raccoons. But humans may also become infected with it under certain circumstances. Vladimir Kartashev, a professor of medicine at Rostov State Medical University who treated the Russian woman wrote a study on dirofilariasis in 2015 which revealed that between June 1997 and June 2013 nearly 1,300, mostly women who visited rural areas, were infected in Russia.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 22, 2018 02:10 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).