Hepatic larva migrans presenting with upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage: A case report

Visceral larva migrans (VLM) occurs because of a host inflammatory response to the migrating larvae of a nematode. Patients usually present with fever, hepatomegaly and abdominal pain; vascular arterial complications are uncommon. A 19-year female presented with fever, jaundice, abdominal discomfort and melena. Computed tomography (CT) revealed multiple discrete, clustered, complex hepatic cystic lesions consistent with VLM, along with an arterial pseudoaneurysm from the right hepatic artery which was managed with endovascular coil embolisation.

Visceral Larva Migrans: A Rare Encounter by a Cytologist

VLM is a zoonotic disease caused by the migration of third-stage larvae of nematodes through the tissue of human viscera. Among various etiological agents such as Baylisascaris procyonis, Capillaria hepatica, Ascaris sum, and some Ancylostoma species, Toxocara is a major cause of VLM. Poor hygiene, contact with dogs and geophagia increases the risk of toxocariasis.Young adults and children who are in close contact with animals are at a higher risk. Here we present a case of 7 years male child presenting with fever, abdominal pain and vomiting. The clinical presentation, biochemical and radiological findings supported the diagnosis of VLM which was corroborated in the cytological examination. Here we report a rarest encounter of VLM in the cytology smear.

Co-existing Tubercular Pleural Effusion and Visceral Larva Migrans in a Patient with Hypereosinophilia: A Rare Case

Eosinophilic pleural effusions accounts for 5-16% of all the cases of pleural effusion. Here the authors present a case of 21 years old male patient, with right-sided chest pain in whom peripheral blood eosinophilia along with eosinophilic pleural effusion were found after a series of relevant investigations and two causative factors were found for same i.e., Visceral Larva Migrans (VLM) and tubercular pleural effusion. Both of them individually can cause hypereosinophilia, but presence of them together makes this case rare and interesting.

Visceral larva migrans detection using PCR–RFLP in BALB/c mice infected with Toxocara canis

Toxocara canis is an important zoonotic roundworm distributed worldwide. The infective larvae of T. canis are one of the causes of visceral larva migrans (VLM), a clinical syndrome in humans. Diagnosing VLM is difficult, and the differential diagnosis of the larval development stage is limited. Therefore, this experimental research aimed to diagnose T. canis larvae using a molecular method, not only in liver tissue, which is the most commonly affected tissue, but also in the limb muscles, lungs and brain tissues. For this purpose, 24 BALB/c mice were infected with 1000 embryonated T. canis eggs. Necropsies were performed on the second, fourth, seventh and 14th days post-infection. While a part of the samples were digested with pepsin-HCl, the molecular method was used for the remainder of the samples to replicate the mitochondrial DNA adenosine triphosphate (ATP) synthase subunit-6 gene region of T. canis. BbsI, a restriction endonuclease, was used to determine the specificity of the amplicons obtained from Polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The detection limit for embryonated eggs was recorded. The PCR results showed that the sensitivity of the PCR analysis was 83.3% in the liver (with 88.8% accuracy), 87.5% in the lungs (with 91.6% accuracy) and 75.0% in the brain, forelimb and hindlimb muscles (with 83.3% accuracy). In all tissues, the test specificity was determined to be 100%. In this study, the molecular method was applied to only experimentally infected BALB/c mice tissues; thus, it is suggested that it can be also employed in different paratenic hosts and materials possibly infected with T. canis.