For eight months, a 35-year-old man in India was bothered by his left eye. It was red and blurry. When he finally visited an ophthalmology clinic, it didn't take long for doctors to unearth the cause.

In a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors report that they first noted that the eye was bloodshot and inflamed, and the pupil was dilated and fixed. The man's vision in the eye was 20/80. A quick look inside his eye revealed it was all due to a small worm, which they watched "moving sluggishly" in the back of his eyeball.

To gouge out the parasitic pillager, the doctors performed a pars plana vitrectomy—a procedure that involves sucking out some of the jelly-like vitreous inside the eye. This procedure can be used in the treatment of a variety of eye conditions, but using it to hoover up worms is rare. In order to get in, the doctors make tiny incisions in the white parts of the eye (the sclera) and use a hollow needle-like device with suction. They replace extracted eye jelly with things like saline.

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Though the worm removal was successful, he experienced vision complications.

Texas is gearing up for war as a savage, flesh-eating fly appears poised for a US invasion and is expanding its range of victims.

On Friday, the Texas Department of Agriculture announced the debut of TDA Swormlure, a synthetic bait designed to attract the flies with a scent that mimics open flesh wounds, which are critical to the lifecycle of the fly, called the New World Screwworm. The parasite exploits any open wound or orifice on a wide range of warm-blooded animals to feed its ravenous spawn. Female flies lay hundreds of eggs in even the tiniest abrasion. From there, screw-shaped larvae—which give the flies their name—emerge to literally twist and bore into their victim, eating them alive and causing a putrid, life-threatening lesion. (You can see a graphic example here on a deer.)

The new lure for the flies is just one of several defense efforts in Texas, which stands to suffer heavy livestock losses from an invasion. Screwworms are a ferocious foe to many animals, but are particularly devastating to farm animals.

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About two months after receiving a donated kidney, a 61-year-old man ended up back in the hospital. He was tired, nauseous, and vomiting. He was also excessively thirsty and producing too much urine. Over the next 10 days, things only got worse. The oxygen levels in his blood began to fall. His lungs filled with fluid. He kept vomiting. He couldn't eat. Doctors inserted a feeding tube. His oxygen levels and blood pressure kept falling. He was admitted to the intensive care unit and put on mechanical ventilation. Still, things kept getting worse.

At that point, he was transferred to the ICU of Massachusetts General Hospital, where he had received the transplant. He was in acute respiratory failure and shock.

In a case report in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors at Mass General explained how they determined what was wrong with the man. Their first steps were collecting more information about the man's symptoms from his wife, reviewing his family medical history, and contacting the regional organ-procurement organization that provided the kidney.

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