Case Report: Ocular Gnathostomiasis in Venezuela Most Likely Acquired in Texas.

A 69-year-old male dentist in Caracas, Venezuela, was referred to our Cornea Clinic with a history of pain, photophobia, and blurred vision on his left eye. Routine biomicroscopic examination with a slit lamp showed a worm in the corneal stroma of his left eye. The worm was surgically removed and was identified morphologically as Gnathostoma binucleatum.

Gnathostoma spinigerum infection in the upper lip of a Korean woman: an autochthonous case in Korea.

Autochthonous human gnathostomiasis had never been reported in the Republic of Korea. We report here a case of Gnathostoma spinigerum infection in a 32-year-old Korean woman, presumed to have been infected via an indigenous route. The patient had experienced a painful migratory swelling near the left nasolabial fold area of the face for a year, with movement of the swelling to the mucosal area of the upper lip 2 weeks before surgical removal of the lesion. Histopathological examinations of the extracted tissue revealed inflammation with heavy eosinophilic infiltrations and sections of a nematode suggestive of a Gnathostoma sp. larva. The larva characteristically revealed about 25 intestinal cells with multiple (3-6) nuclei in each intestinal cell consistent with the 3rd-stage larva of G. spinigerum. The patient did not have any special history of travel abroad except a recent trip, 4 months before surgery, to China where she ate only cooked food. The patient is the first recorded autochthonous case of G. spinigerum infection in Korea.