What are the parasites that lay their eggs under the skin?

Get acquainted with the sarcoptic and the bot, two parasites humans you wouldn’t like to meet…

Sarcoptes, responsible for scabies

The sarcoptic (Sarcoptes scabiei) is a lowercase insect, too small to be seen with the naked eye, which has a round body and six legs. He is responsible for scabies. A touched human carries usually ten to twelve adult parasites. The male dies after breeding but the female nestles in the upper layers of theepidermis and lays one to three eggs per day. It also leaves a trail of color dark: his excrement.

Among the favorite places of mites are the hands, wrists, armpits and genitals. Eggs and feces trigger allergic reactions in the skin, which lead to severe itching.

If you are unlucky and have been infected with “Norwegian scabies”, the most serious and contagious form, prepare to have thousands of mites in your skin… Your hands, feet and trunk will peel and will be covered with scabs where countless animals will hide.

The bot, a larva under the skin

The bot is another human parasite potential. A month after returning from Costa Rica, Tanya Andrews noticed a painful lump on her head. She assumed it was an abscess, until the lump began to ripple. It turned out that was the larva of a bot. When Tanya was in Costa Rica, a mosquito had laid a tiny egg on his skull. It had hatched and a larva had come out, which had lodged under its skin and started to grow.

To treat the parasite, the doctors smeared it with petroleum jelly. The larvae needair to breathe, and when the petroleum jelly blocked the air, the larva suffocated and died. Once the larva died, the doctors were able to extract it from the scalp with tweezers.

In another documented case, a Canadian woman returned from a trip to Peru and found a lump just above her peg. She went to a clinic in Toronto and the doctor noticed movement in size. During the examination of the patient, he found other lumps and removed a total of eleven gypsy larvae all wriggling.