Monday, November 30, 2020

Case of the Week 616

 This week's interesting case was donated by Dr. Neil Anderson, one of our former outstanding Clinical Microbiology fellows. The following were seen in a bacterial culture from a stool specimen. What do you think the clinical significance is?



10 comments:

Sam said...

Tracks of a hatched nematode. I can't be more specific than that unfortunately. I have read about cases of Strongyloides leaving tracks in sputum culture.

ParasiteGal said...

Sorry the video wasn't working Sam. I've now fixed that.

Anonymous said...

Watch, watch, watch! One will likely be inclined to diagnose this as a nematodes infection with hatching larvae crawling over the agars. The answers of Strongyloides or hookworms will easily be ruled out if we magnify the video enough, the larva is segmented and from time to time would lift up its head, showing the two black mandibles. It is a fly larva! My diagnosis is “Petri’s myasis”! The other rule out is that there was no sorbitol negative E. coli recovered (Read the plate reflection on a mirror).
Anyway, this is a great fun case as we are preparing for a festive holiday ahead.
Florida Fan

John Markantonis DO said...

Most likely Strongyloides

Dwight Ferris said...

Completely agree with anonymous - dipteran fly larva on the plate!

shellymichalski01 said...

looks like an insect larva to me

Kosta Y. Mumcuoglu said...

I had many similar pictures when I was producing sterile (better disinfected) Lucilia sericata larvae for maggot debridement therapy. After the disinfection of the eggs we placed them in different bacteriological media and waited until the larvae hatched and we knew whether they were disinfected. Sometimes the disinfection did not work, there were bacteria growing on the plate and the larvae with their movements were creating these lines. At least in the second and third picture, we can clearly see the larvae, most probably from the Calliphoridae family.

Idzi P. said...

I completely agree with the nice explanations given by Florida Fan and Kosta.
Dipteran maggots “served” on a plate!
For those working with a mobile device: the video might still not be visible - scroll to bottom of page and switch to desktop version. It will appear then!

Unknown said...

Fly Larva. Cool vid. Thanks!

erletay said...

It is a fruit fly larva, we can often see in summer months. Has no clinical significance, it's contamination. But so cute!