A 32-year-old woman in Russia noticed a small lump under her left eye. The unusual bump that she noticed after snapping a selfie left her even more alarmed when she saw it move. The woman tracked the mysterious lump through a series of selfies and literally saw it move across her face. The lump migrated above her left eye, five days after she first noticed the lump; 10 days later, it moved to her upper lip. Soon after the lump migrated, she went to an ophthalmologist who also observed superficial movement of the lump. According to a report published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the ophthalmologist observed a “superficial moving oblong nodule at the left upper eyelid” (Kartashev & Simon, 2018).

Turned out, the woman was infected with Dirofilaria repens, a type of parasitic worm. According to a report published about a similar case in 2011, Dirofilaria repens are thread-like worms that typically live in the tissue under the skin and infect foxes, cats, dogs and wild animals (Permi et al., 2011). In other words, humans are accidental hosts and not where the worms want to end up since they typically cannot reproduce inside humans.

Human cases of the infection have been reported in parts of Africa, Asia and Europe; the worms spread by mosquito bites. According to the report, the Russian woman had recently traveled to a rural area outside Moscow, where she was frequently bit by mosquitoes. A professor of medicine at the Rostov State Medical University in Rostov-na-Donu, Russia, Dr. Vladimir Kartashev who treated the patient said that there have been more than 4000 human cases of the infection since 1997, in Ukraine and Russia. Human cases have been on the rise in recent years. According to a study published in 2015, the number of cases of Dirofilaria increased from 8 cases reported in 1997 to 200 cases reported in 2015 (Kartashev et al., 2015).

The parasitic infection in humans usually shows up as lumps beneath the skin. Moreover, sometimes, the lumps caused because of the worms move around. According to another study published in 2014 (Ermakova et al., 2014), more than 200 cases of Dirofilaria repens infection documented over a 17-year period were reported in Russia. 35 percent of the patients reported that they could feel something crawling under their skin.

Sounds horrifying, however, the treatment is relatively simple. Removing the worm surgically can cure the infection. Likewise, the Russian woman made full recovery after the worm was surgically removed.

References

Ermakova, L. A., Nagorny, S. A., Krivorotova, E. Y., Pshenichnaya, N. Y., & Matina, O. N. (2014). Dirofilaria repens in the Russian Federation: current epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment from a federal reference center perspective. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 23, 47-52.

Kartashev, V., & Simon, F. (2018). Migrating Dirofilaria repens. New England Journal of Medicine, 378(25), e35.

Kartashev, V., Tverdokhlebova, T., Korzan, A., Vedenkov, A., Simón, L., González-Miguel, J., … & Simón, F. (2015). Human subcutaneous/ocular dirofilariasis in the Russian Federation and Belarus, 1997–2013. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 33, 209-211.

Permi, H. S., Veena, S., Prasad, H. K., Kumar, Y. S., Mohan, R., & Shetty, K. J. (2011). Subcutaneous human dirofilariasis due to Dirofilaria repens: report of two cases. Journal of global infectious diseases, 3(2), 199.