Twirling parasitic worms throw dance party in man’s scrotum
In medical terms, the dance party is called the "filarial dance sign."
Enlarge / This photomicrograph depicts a close view of the posterior end of a Wuchereria bancrofti microfilaria, a leading cause for human lymphatic filariasis. (credit: CDC/ Dr. Mae Melvin)
When parasitic worms make it into a scrotum, they have a ball—and dance like nobody's watching.
But in a hospital in New Delhi, India, doctors were watching. And they caught the dangling disco on film, down to their lymphatic limbo line, according to a short report appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine this week.
The parasitic worms in this case were Wuchereria bancrofti, which are spread by mosquitoes in some tropic and subtropical areas of Asia, Africa, the Western Pacific, the Caribbean, and South America. The wriggling ravers stream through the human lymphatic system. Adult worms can live for five to seven years and, when they mate, can produce millions of boogying babies, called microfilariae. Together, they cause a disease called lymphatic filariasis that can lead to tissue swelling (lymphedema), elephantiasis, and, in men, swelling of the scrotum.