In 2010, 19-year-old Australian Sam Ballard contracted a microscopic parasite after eating a garden slug. Suffering from significant brain damage, he died on Friday November 2.
Sam Ballard’s ordeal lasted eight years. On Friday November 2, the 28-year-old Australian died of an infection with a parasite called rat lungworm (Angiostrongylus cantonensis).
Suffering from severe brain damage, the young man had been motor disabled for years, having developed eosinophilic meningoencephalitis (a serious but rarely fatal infectious disease) when the lungworm migrated from his digestive tract to his brain.
Sam Ballard, the Sydney man who fell into a coma and became paralyzed after eating a slug, has tragically died eight years on. https://t.co/2doMQaLqjv
— news.com.au (@newscomauHQ) November 5, 2018
420 days in a coma
It all started with a stupid challenge. On the Australian site News.com, Jimmy Galvin, one of Sam Ballard’s best friends, says the young man was tricked into swallowing a garden slug. “That’s how it happened,” he says.
The young man would not have fallen ill immediately, but would have complained of severe pain in his legs in the days that followed. He reportedly feared that these symptoms were due to eating the slug, but his mother reportedly told him that “no one gets sick from this”.
After initially fearing he had multiple sclerosis, Sam Ballard received confirmation from doctors that he was infected with rat lungworm.
Some time later, the young man contracted eosinophilic meningoencephalitis and fell into a coma, in which he remained for 420 days. When he woke up, his brain was damaged beyond repair. He had since been paralyzed from the neck down and had difficulty communicating.
Rest in sweet peace, Sam.https://t.co/U3IPj2WJps
—Lisa Wilkinson (@Lisa_Wilkinson) November 5, 2018
A parasite that thrives in rats
Present throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific, theAngiostrongylus cantonensis is a parasitic worm whose larvae develop in the pulmonary arteries of rats. Through contact with food or water contaminated with rat feces, it can enter the human body. Under normal circumstances, first instar larvae hatch in the rat’s lungs and then travel to the intestine, from where they are excreted into the environment. Back in the soil, the larvae infect their intermediate hosts, usually snails and slugs. After two months of maturation in the molluscs, the mature third-stage larvae are ready to invade a new rodent.
Sam Ballard was therefore contaminated by swallowing the intermediate host of the parasite. However, as explained to CNN Heather Stockdale Walden, assistant professor in the department of infectious diseases and pathology at the University of Florida, the larvae of the worm can wreak havoc in the human body. Those located in the digestive tract can trigger an inflammatory disease whose symptoms are similar to those of appendicitis. “If they migrate to the brain, they can trigger eosinophilic meningitis”, which leads to inflammation of the membranes surrounding the spinal cord and the brain. What happened to Sam Ballard.
In the years following his infection, Sam Ballard had managed, through rehabilitation, to regain partial control of his limbs. However, he had to receive care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, until his death.
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