title: Gnathostoma spinigerum infection in the upper lip of a Korean woman: an autochthonous case in Korea.
abstract: Autochthonous human gnathostomiasis had never been reported in the Republic of Korea. We report here a case of Gnathostoma spinigerum infection in a 32-year-old Korean woman, presumed to have been infected via an indigenous route. The patient had experienced a painful migratory swelling near the left nasolabial fold area of the face for a year, with movement of the swelling to the mucosal area of the upper lip 2 weeks before surgical removal of the lesion. Histopathological examinations of the extracted tissue revealed inflammation with heavy eosinophilic infiltrations and sections of a nematode suggestive of a Gnathostoma sp. larva. The larva characteristically revealed about 25 intestinal cells with multiple (3-6) nuclei in each intestinal cell consistent with the 3rd-stage larva of G. spinigerum. The patient did not have any special history of travel abroad except a recent trip, 4 months before surgery, to China where she ate only cooked food. The patient is the first recorded autochthonous case of G. spinigerum infection in Korea.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Bundang Jesaeng General Hospital, Seongnam 463-774, Korea.
authors.forename: Jae Hee
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Hyemi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lim
authors.forename: Young-Sang
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: Tae Yeon
authors.initials: TY
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Eun Mee
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Eun-Hee
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Shin
authors.forename: Jong-Yil
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Chai
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D006039:Gnathostoma / Q000145:classification*; D058429:Gnathostomiasis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000469:parasitology / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D056910:Republic of Korea / Q000453:epidemiology
keywords: Gnathostoma spinigerum; case report; gnathostomiasis; lip