Worm pulled from woman’s eye makes medical history

A woman in the US has become the first person ever to be infected with a rare microscopic eye worm that was previously only found in cattle.

In 2016, 26-year-old Abby Beckley from Oregon, felt an itching sensation in her eye for over a week before she pulled a half inch worm from her eyeball, said a report by the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene this week.

Beckley visited a local doctor, who removed two more worms. An ophthalmologist found three more and over the course of a 20-day stay at the CDC, where the parasite was identified as a member of the Thelazia family, 14 more worms were extracted from her eye. According to CDC researcher and lead author of the report, Richard Bradbury, the worms could not be removed all at once, only as they became present and visible.