Human ocular thelaziosis—a zoonosis of the eye

A 36-year-old man presented to the ophthalmology department with a 1-month history of redness in his right eye, photophobia, and tearing and foreign body sensation without improvement, despite antibiotics and topical treatment with corticosteroid at the regional hospital. The right eye showed mild conjunctivitis with a few conjunctival congestions and revealed two creamy, thread-like, mobile worms in the lower conjunctival sac. The patient reported that he had no contact with dogs or cats but remembered a fruit-fly-like insect that flew into his eye 1 month earlier. The worms were removed with ophthalmic forceps, and one worm was sent to our laboratory for morphology observation and the other worm was sent to a reference laboratory for molecular identification. Ocular symptoms resolved rapidly after the removal of the worms, with no recurrence upon 6-month follow-up.