Friday Parasite #6: They Can Fly!

When I was a little kid, I had a case of pinworms. Naturally, I was mortified at the time – for one thing, I knew that if anyone in my class ever found out the teasing would probably last until the heat death of the universe. My mother blamed my fingernail-biting habit, claiming that I’d probably gotten them from playing with the neighbor’s cats. Now I know better.

Enterobius vermicularis is a nematode worm. It only lives inside human guts (and here's a movie from NEJM, if you have a strong stomach and want to see what it looks like), so the cats were innocent. They may have given me Toxoplasmosis, but never pinworms. In fact, the culprit was probably one of my Torquemada-like classmates. And I might not even have gotten it off their hands. Pinworm females lay their eggs around their host’s anus, but the eggs are sticky and get transferred to clothing easily. Once they're there, the eggs are so tiny that they can become airborne. If they’re floating, anyone can come along and inhale them. No wonder they’re so ubiquitous.


Photomicrograph of pinworm egg from
S.J. Upton, Kansas State University

Comments

[Nathan]

That video was almost as cool as the South Park episode PixelFish has on her site.