Monday, July 18, 2016

Case of the Week 405

This week's case is from my own lab, with the beautiful images taken by Emily F. The patient is an asymptomatic male who underwent routine screening colonoscopy, which revealed the following:
Two objects were removed during colonoscopy and submitted to the Clinical Parasitology lab for identification:

 By manipulating the objects, we were able to express the following:


Identification?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trichuris trichiura. Nice depiction of the hyaline plugs. Is the worm more developed in the first image of the egg?
BW in Vt

MarkE said...

Trichuriasis, which is infection with the parasite Trichuris trichiura, or whipworm.

Lyric said...

Whip worm! Beauty!

Claudia said...

Eww trichuris

Unknown said...

Trichuris trichiura - whipworm. The first egg looks to be underdeveloped due to the granular and non-defined nature of the interior, a rather common observation when eggs are mechanically expressed.
They appear to be males judging by the way the posterior portion tapers gently into the eponymous anterior portion, in female worms there is a more distinct transition between the two ends with the posterior portion being much thicker than in its male counterpart. Females also tend to be larger in general. Those are all observations made by looking at many T.suis specimens, so they may not be applicable to T.trichiura.

William Sears said...

trichuris trichuria

Donna said...

TT. Know it well. Tried to attach an illustration of RP caused by TT.

Anonymous said...

trichuris,whipworm

Anonymous said...

Definitely Trichuria trichuria, the whip like worm. The second egg is more characteristic of this species.

Florida Fan

Antonio Quispe said...

I have saw several Trichuris trichuria specimens in the past but this one with the whip like form pictures is just a beauty. If the case have come with the first egg picture only I'm pretty sure that many would miss the mark with the diagnosis but as a thypical case the one presented is a very nice work. Thanks for sharing!