Parasitic worm causes woman to fall sick... 27 years later
Posted: 15 June 2007 0812 hrs

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PARIS - Dutch doctors treating a woman for a badly inflamed colon were stunned to discover that the cause was a tropical parasitic worm that had probably infected her at least 27 years earlier.

The 49-year-old unnamed woman had been born and raised in Suriname, South America before emigrating to the Netherlands at the age of 22, according to the case report reported in The Lancet on Saturday.

She was admitted to Nijmegen Medical Centre with vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal cramps.

Tests showed her faeces to be riddled with the larvae of Strongyloides stercoralis, a 2.5mm-long threadworm that lives in tunnels in the intestines' mucal lining.

The patient was given ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug, and was discharged.

The authors believe the woman was highly unlikely to have picked up the parasite either in the Netherlands or Spain, the only place she had been, for a short holiday, since emigrating to Europe.

As the worm is endemic in Suriname, she must have been infected there, the case report says. And as she had no previous history of intestinal problems, the likely trigger for the infestation was chronic alcohol abuse and malnutrition, it suggests. - AFP/ir