{"id":44927,"date":"2026-04-08T16:46:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=44927"},"modified":"2026-04-08T16:46:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:46:27","slug":"woman-sneezes-nearly-1-inch-long-worms-how-she-got-the-biologically-implausible-infection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=44927","title":{"rendered":"Woman sneezes nearly 1-inch-long &#8216;worms&#8217; \u2014 how she got the &#8216;biologically implausible&#8217; infection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Achoo fly? One Greek woman\u2019s close encounter with a family of sheep bot flies is nothing to sneeze at.<\/p>\n<p>It all started next to a field of grazing sheep in Greece, where an unidentified 58-year-old was working outdoors in the dry September heat.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She \u201cnoticed numerous flies swarming around her face,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/wwwnc.cdc.gov\/eid\/article\/32\/3\/25-1077_article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">according to a new medical report<\/a>, and about a week later, she began experiencing pain in her sinuses.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>The sheep bot fly is a parasite that typically grows and molts inside the nasal passages of sheep and goats before being deposited in the soil for pupation. <span class=\"credit\">Inna \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The next few weeks brought \u201csevere coughing,\u201d but no other symptoms.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Until one day, Oct. 15 to be exact, she sneezed out a \u201cworm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Soon after, an ear, nose and throat doctor got to work surgically removing 10 larvae and a pupa \u2014 a teenage insect between the larval and adult stages \u2014 from the big sinuses on the side of her nose.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module aligncenter wp-block-nypost-editor-primary-tag\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>With the help of some nasal decongestants, the woman made a full recovery, and none of her co-workers came forward with similar symptoms.<\/p>\n<p>DNA testing of the dislodged critters, one of which was almost an inch long, revealed they were baby sheep bot flies (Oestrus ovis), a parasite with a well-documented history of taking up residence in the nasal passages of sheep and goats.<\/p>\n<p>Less so in humans.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Doctors extracted 10 larvae and one pupa from the woman\u2019s sinuses. <span class=\"credit\">Ilias P. Kioulos, Emmanouil Kokkas, and Evangelia-Theophano Piperak<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>So how did this horror show wriggle into being?<\/p>\n<p>There have been a handful of cases of these flies setting up shop in human cavities, most commonly around the eyes \u2014 a condition known as <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC3616576\/#:~:text=Sheep%20and%20goat%20are%20the,eyes%2C%20is%20a%20rare%20occurrence.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ophthalmic myiasis<\/a> \u2014 rather than in the nose or mouth. Historically, the larvae in those cases were unable to develop past the first larval stage into full wormlike creatures.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, that\u2019s changed a bit. There have been reports of later-stage larvae growing in people, especially when the person exhibits immunosuppression or has \u201ctraumatic or anatomic abnormalities of the nasal passages.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module alignright\">\n\t<\/aside>\n<p>The 58-year-old wormectomy patient \u2014 whose official diagnosis was \u201cO. ovis nasal myiasis with pupation\u201d \u2014 apparently had a seriously deviated septum, keeping the interlopers from being sucked into the nasal passages and allowing them to camp out in the sinuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There, they could proceed with their development and even reach the pupation stage \u2014\u00a0something scientists thought was hitherto \u201cbiologically implausible\u201d in any mammal, including in their usual ruminant hosts. (Usually, the larvae grow and molt inside the nasal passages of sheep and goats and are later expelled into the soil, where they pupate.)<\/p>\n<p>Later-stage larvae that get trapped in an animal\u2019s sinuses haven\u2019t been known to pupate, the report explained. \u201cInstead, they desiccate, liquefy or calcify,\u201d sometimes leading to \u201cbacterial superinfection.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>The black casing is a remnant of the pupa. <span class=\"credit\">Ilias P. Kioulos, Emmanouil Kokkas, and Evangelia-Theophano Piperaki<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Buzzkill.<\/p>\n<p>In general, healthy, well-functioning sinuses aren\u2019t an ideal landing pad for these baby flies, as certain biological elements create \u201chostile\u201d conditions for pupation: They\u2019re not the right temperature, humidity levels are wrong, and there are all kinds of mucuses and immune response bacteria that get in the way of pupal development.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Doctors in this case believe the patient\u2019s septum deviation made the difference, somehow changing the environment of the sinuses enough to give the larvae a cozy shelter.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The researchers also posed a disturbing alternative: Maybe this woman\u2019s nightmare head cold was an early sign that the sheep bot fly was adapting into a human bot fly, \u201cenabling O. ovis parasites to complete their life cycle in humans.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But before the science fiction junkies and doomsday-ers get too ahead of themselves, it would behoove us all to see some more research on the fly\u2019s actual capabilities.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/08\/health\/woman-sneezes-nearly-1-inch-long-worms-how-she-got-the-biologically-implausible-infection\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Achoo fly? One Greek woman\u2019s close encounter with a family of sheep bot flies is nothing to sneeze at. It all started next to a field&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}