Filarial Worm or Cataract?

     Filarial Worms, like most parasites, do not discriminate with regard to age. As discussed in my last article, filarial worms can go undetected by simple human assumption. Many doctors often times attribute symptoms to other issues. This is especially true in the case of the elderly. Blurriness of vision, for example, would often times be attributed to the normal signs of aging and possibly cataracts.

     There was certainly evidence for this in the work done by Lam et al., (2010). An 80-year-old woman, complaining of left eye pain and blurriness of vision, made a visit to her doctor. Her eye sight was poor, and there was a localized cornea oedema which is essentially an excessive amount of fluid and therefore swelling around the cornea. Upon further examination, it became evident there was a worm in the anterior chamber (figure 1). The worm was approximately 4mm, white, semitransparent, and photosensitive. The worm was rounded on one end and pointed at the other. The woman was started on a treatment of Bethamethasone 0.1% drops and Cyclopentolate 0.5%. The worm was surgically removed and sent to a parasitologist who identified the worm being from the genus Dunnifilaria, and most likely from the species Dunnifilaria ramachandrani (figure 2).

     The woman’s blood film, stool, and urine were examined for parasitic infection, but all tests were negative. Though only a localized infection, worm infestation of the eye as well as breast tissue (previous article post) is an uncommon event. Human infection is most commonly associated with worms in the genus Dirofilaria rather than Dunnifilaria as well.

Works Cited

Lam, H. H., V. Subrayan, and G. Khaw. "Intraocular Filarial Infection." Eye 24.12 (2010): 1825-1826. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.

http://0-web.ebscohost.com.www.consuls.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=a13d0b5d-1e0e-4937-853d-7bb6210dc315%40sessionmgr104&vid=10&hid=127