Itching of the eye is usually ignored by most people around the world. But, when a French man’s irritation continued for hours, the last thing he expected to discover was a dozen of fly larvae inside his eyes.
According to a paper published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, the 53-year-old man, who hasn’t been identified, rushed to a hospital emergency with itching in his right eye. He told doctors that he had been gardening near a horse and sheep farm earlier that day when he felt something enter his eye.
As the health professionals took a closer look to find what was causing the problem, they discovered “numerous mobile, translucent larvae” on his cornea and conjunctiva. The authors from the University Hospital of Saint-Etienne in France wrote in the report that the larvae were identified as “Oestrus ovis, the sheep bot fly.”
While the cornea is the transparent outer covering at the front of the eye, the conjunctiva is the membrane, the loose connective tissue that covers the surface of the eyeball.
The man was diagnosed with external ophthalmomyiasis, or “an infestation of the outer structures of the eye by fly larvae,” the authors of the paper added. They noted that as there was no cure for the condition, the only solution left with them was to physically remove the organisms from the eyeball using forceps, according to 9 News.
The doctors then prescribed the man some topical antibiotic treatments in case they missed removing any of the larvae from his eye, The Independent added. The newspaper said the larvae can burrow their way inside the eyeball in rare cases and that it can cause severe damage to one’s vision.
According to the University of Florida, the species of fly can cause parasitic infections in sheep worldwide. “Unlike other flies, females are known to larviposit. This means the eggs are hatched while still inside the female fly, and she will deposit a droplet containing live larvae on the nose of a sheep,” said the university on its website.
