Monday, June 17, 2019

Case of the Week 549

This week's rather creepy and very cool case was donated by Dr. Matt Bolek and Christina Anaya. While the host shown here is not a human, this parasite emerging from the cricket is occasionally submitted to human clinical parasitology laboratories. What is its significance for human health?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Poor little crickets, it is infected with horsehair worms or Nematomorpha. The creatures are not of clinical significance yet, since we are in the summer, they can be found in puddles by toddlers and the horrified mothers may bring them in for worm identification.
Florida Fan

William Sears said...

nematomorpha, gordian worm

Bernardino Rocha said...

Is indeed a nematomorpha, the larvae of Paragordius tricuspidatus, a parasitoid. Another bad boy who manipulates the behavior of it´s host. Clinically it has no meaning, other than what was referred by Florida Fan

Sir Galahad said...



Insetto parassitato da Nematomorfo. Non ha rilevanza clinica per l'uomo.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the previous interventions.
I remember that some years ago a student of the course of Parasitology at Granada University (Spain), proposed a discussion in the forum of the subject that he called in Spanish "Parasitosidades" (from parasite plus curiosities).
The first topic he proposed was the alteration of the behavior of the hosts by parasites; the example he proposed was the "suicidal" behavior of the crickets induced by the Nematomorpha and he also uploaded a small video, not as good as the one we see now on the blog. We were all very impressed and the topic was very successful.
Luis

Anonymous said...

Fantastic video. I felt sorry for the cricket. I did find one report of humans being "infected." The two patients cited have interesting histories to shed light on the mode of infection. Thank you Bobbi, for this very creepy case.
BW in Vt


Korean J Parasitol. 2012 Sep; 50(3): 263–267.
Published online 2012 Aug 13. doi: 10.3347/kjp.2012.50.3.263
PMCID: PMC3428576
PMID: 22949758
Two Human Cases Infected by the Horsehair Worm, Parachordodes sp. (Nematomorpha: Chordodidae), in Japan
Minoru Yamada,corresponding author1 Tatsuya Tegoshi,1 Niichiro Abe,2 and Misako Urabe3

dirus said...

Yes, Nematomorpha as mentioned above.

Old One said...

Wonderful anecdotes

Idzi P. said...

Indeed: wonderful anecdotes! And splendid video material!

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