A WOMAN who thought she had a bad reaction to bug bites actually had maggots burrowing into her skin.
When the 46-year-old woman went to A&E after 10 days of pain and swelling in her right arm doctors thought she had been bitten by an insect. But when she returned the next day with her arm in pain, medics realised that she had no ordinary skin infection. And the telltale sign? In the ulcers on her skin, something was wiggling, according to a medical journal.
They found several fly larvae burrowed into her skin, The New England Journal of Medicine reports.
They’re from the tumbu fly, sometimes called the skin maggot, a species found in the tropics of Africa.
Indeed, the woman had recently returned from visiting the Ivory Coast, a country in West Africa, where the fly is found.
Female tumbu flies lay their eggs on damp clothing or in the soil, and if their young come into contact with skin, they can burrow in.
Initially they tried to squeeze the flies from the woman’s skin, but Dr John Park, who treated her, said that ultimately surgery was needed.
The medic told Live Science that, after treatment, the woman was given antibiotics and – when docs last saw her – she was doing well.
Had the larvae been left in, they would have grown, forced their way out of her skin, and dropped to the floor to hatch as flies.
According to the report it is easy to miss the bugs during the initial examination stage.
After extraction of the larvae, the patient’s arm pain disappeared and the swelling went down rapidly.
