Oregon woman plucks 14 parasitic worms from eye after infection

An Oregon woman found more than a dozen wiggling worms in her eye and pulled them out one-by-one after becoming the first known human case of a parasitic infection spread by flies.

Abby Beckley, then 26, plucked out whatever was bothering her eye for the past week and realized it was a tiny translucent worm squirming on her finger tip.

"When I pulled out that worm," Beckley told the Oregonian. "I was just in shock."

The worm quickly died outside the safety of her eye but there were still 13 more she managed to remove on her own.

Beckley sought help with an Oregon Health & Science University’s Dr. Erin Bonura and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. She was soon diagnosed with Thelazia gulosa — an eye worm that was only known to infect animals, such as cattle in the northern United States and southern Canada.

The worms — less than half an inch long — are spread by “face flies” that feed on an eyeball’s moisture.

As for how Beckley became infected, she believes horseback riding and fishing in Gold Beach, Ore., a coastal, cattle-farming area, may have played a role.

“We do think she got it by walking through the cattle pastures," Bonura told the paper.

Beckley’s ordeal went public in a CDC report published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Two other types of Thelazia eye worm infections had been documented in people before, but not the type Beckley discovered, the study found.

With News Wire Services