Australian physicians have found a live parasitic roundworm in a woman's brain, the first time the parasite has been identified in a human. Doctors at Canberra Hospital operated on a 64-year-old woman's brain, where they found an 8 cm long Ophidascaris robertsi roundworm. The non-venomous carpet python, a species of snake found in Australia, is frequently infected with this parasite. Up until recently, no reports of it in people had been made. The world's first human case of Ophidascaris has now been discovered. According to an article that was published in the journal Emerging infectious diseases, Sanjaya Senanayake, a top infectious disease expert at the ANU and Canberra Hospital, "This is the first-ever human case of Ophidascaris to be described in the world."
