Technology and Science13 March, 20262 min read
Woman sneezes out maggots after fly larvae get trapped in her deviated septum
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58-year-old Greek woman hosted developing sheep bot fly larvae in her nasal cavity unusually long Larvae developed despite first-stage sheep bot fly larvae usually not developing in humans
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Case overview
A 58-year-old woman in Greece appears to hold the record for growing a parasitic sheep bot fly (Oestrus ovis) in her nose the longest, a situation the Ars Technica article described as almost creating "a snot rocket that could literally fly."
The headline frames the event as larvae trapped in her deviated septum, and the clinical report says the case culminated on October 15 when she sneezed and expelled what she described as "worms," which were identified as late-stage sheep bot fly larvae.
Exposure and timeline
The woman worked outdoors on a Greek island near a field with grazing sheep and recalled a swarm of flies bombarding her face on a hot, dry September day.
About a week after that exposure she developed facial pain, then over the next two to three weeks she developed a cough; her only other symptom reported before October 15 was those earlier pains and the cough.
Biological context
The article explains the normal sheep bot fly lifecycle: in sheep, first-stage larvae move into the sinuses, feed, grow, and molt into second- and third-stage larvae, then drip from the nose, burrow into soil, pupate, and emerge as adult flies.
Experts long thought Oestrus ovis could not complete development in humans beyond the first larval stage, but the Ars Technica piece notes that a few human cases in recent decades have shown second- and third-stage larvae.
Report and significance
The woman's case, reported in the Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases by a medical entomologist and colleagues, goes the furthest yet by documenting a pupa and a puparium—the hard casing of a pupa—found in her nose, marking an unprecedented level of development for this parasite in a human host according to the report.
The article attributes these findings to the published medical-entomology team and frames the case as extending the range of documented human development of sheep bot fly larvae.