Chinese girl vomits live worms for month; doctors finally find tiny moths to blame
8-year-old is only member of family to throw up mystery 1cm-long grubs, causes medical puzzle that confounds array of medics
An eight-year-old girl in China who had been vomiting live worms for a month discovered that the cause of her ills was a common household problem.
Despite seeing many doctors, the unidentified girl from Yangzhou City, eastern China’s Jiangsu province, could not pinpoint the reason why she was throwing up.
Her father said she would vomit a handful of 1cm-long worms each time. No one else in the family suffered the same problem.
A doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Soochow University in Jiangsu came to their rescue.
The doctor, Zhang Bingbing, advised them to have the rarely seen worm checked by the local Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
There, staff immediately recognised the worm, matching it with worms they had once found in a 60-year-old woman.
It turns out to be the larva of drain flies, which are also known as moth flies.
The insects are commonly found in damp interior places, such as the toilet and the kitchen. They more often appear in southern China, which has humid summer weather.