RESUMEN
Thelazia callipaeda or the oriental eye worm infects a wide variety of hosts including dogs, cats, foxes, rabbits, and humans through the Drosophila flies. We report here a case of a 42-year-old female who presented with pain, redness, and cystic swelling in the right lacrimal sac area for 8 months. Ocular examination was within normal limits. Excision biopsy of the cyst revealed a live worm. In humans, the worm is usually found in the conjunctival sac, lacrimal canaliculi, or the lacrimal sac leading to a disease which can be subclinical or symptomatic. Thus, we report a rare presentation of thelaziasis, that is, periocular involvement. This case presentation is first of its kind in the Indian literature.
RESUMEN
A 26-year-old man residing in a village of Thai Nguyen Province, North Vietnam, visited the Thai Nguyen Provincial Hospital in July 2008. He felt a bulge-sticking pain in his left eye and extracted 5 small nematode worms by himself half a day before visiting the hospital. Two more worms were extracted from his left eye by a medical doctor, and they were morphologically observed and genetically analyzed on the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 gene. The worms were 1 male and 1 female, and genetically identical with those of Thelazia callipaeda. By the present study, the presence of human T. callipaeda infection is first reported in Vietnam.