A man was left blind and disfigured after a parasite began to breed in his eyeball.
The unnamed 30-year-old in India developed a tumor the size of a grapefruit on his eyelid that extended to his chest.
It started five years ago with a subtle swelling in his left eye, but grew so large over the years that the skin on his face stretched, pulling the tissue lining his eye, leaving him unable to see.
When he finally sought help, doctors discovered a parasite that causes growths in the nose and eye structures.
The medical team believes the tumor was the body’s way of reacting to the parasite, causing the surrounding tissue to become inflamed.
They’re not sure how long the man had the parasite in his body and where he got it from, but other people who contract the disease usually contract it by swimming or bathing in rural areas or in creeks near farms.
The doctors determined that the unknown man had an angiofibroma, a gigantic tumor, with associated rhinosporidiosis, a parasitic infection.
The two rarely occur simultaneously, the team wrote in a case report.
A brain scan before the surgery showed the mass, made of skin and blood tissue, sticking to the man’s left eyelid
The tumor, which measured six inches in diameter and clung to a four-inch flap of eye tissue, was not cancerous but still caused debilitating side effects.
The man’s tumor grew so large that it covered his eye socket, rendering him unable to see
Surgeons from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences operated to remove the mass from his eye, cutting the ‘huge’ distorted blood vessels that had grown to support the lump, in a bid to prevent major blood loss.
The operation was a success and within three months the man’s eye had returned to normal and he could see again, the authors reported The British Medical Journal.
Infections with rhinosporidiosis are rare but are most commonly reported in tropical areas of India and Sri Lanka, although some cases have also been documented in South America, Africa and the USA.
A 2021 study reported 286 cases of the condition between 1896 and 2019, about 34 of which were in the US.
Most people with rhinosporidiosis are 11 to 40 years old and the condition is more common in men.
The disease is not fatal and in some cases people live with the lumps for a long time. One man reportedly lived with rhinosporidiosis for thirty years Medscape.
Scientists have been baffled by the parasite that causes the infection, Rhinosporidium seeberi, for more than a century since it was first identified in 1900.
Doctors performed surgery on the case study patient to remove the massive growth from his face
They have been unable to grow the parasite in a laboratory to study it – and scientists disagree on whether it is a bacteria or a fungus.
They know that people who live in rural areas, live on farms and bathe in ponds or rivers are at greater risk of contracting the parasite.
Healthcare workers find it difficult to treat the disease and often opt for surgery to cut it out. However, this does not always work, as many people who develop the disease develop recurring lumps.
In some cases, doctors have successfully used an antibiotic cream called dapsone to tackle the problem Medscape.
Even more mysterious is the case of the Indian man. The researchers said that rhinosporidiosis “rarely” occurs at the same time as angiofibromas.
These are non-cancerous tumors that arise from a combination of the skin’s connective tissue, such as collagen, and blood vessels.
The above shows a patient with a rhinosporidiosis infection, the same infection that the Indian case study patient had
They are often caused by genetic conditions and usually form in the nose, making it difficult to breathe and causing problems with the sinuses, eyes or skull, the researchers said. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The most common treatment for this is surgery. Sometimes radiation or hormone therapy is used to shrink the remains of the tumor that are not accessible with a scalpel.
The man in the case study did not appear to have any of the genetic conditions most associated with this type of tumor.
The authors wrote that when they tested the cells in the tumor, they found small patches of rhinosporidiosis parasites throughout the fleshy mass.
This suggests that the tumor may have been the body’s way of responding to the invader: inflaming the tissue until it gathered around the parasite, trying to contain or fight it off.
Doctors wrote that his case “highlights the complexity of the diagnosis and management of this rare combination of pathologies and the need for careful treatment planning.”