NCBI ROFL: Jeez people, enough with the cockroaches in
your colons already.

post from Discoblog » NCBI ROFL on 07 August 2012 07:00:25 PM. © Discoblog » NCBI ROFL

Caught on camera: an unusual type of bug in the gut.

“During screening colonoscopy, a cockroach was encountered in the transverse colon of a 51-year-old woman with a history of schizophrenia. It was <1 cm in size and had a green, aqueous substance sticking to its legs. Despite extreme caution during extraction, the cockroach disintegrated and was removed by using suction. The patient denied any knowledge of accidental ingestion or history of pica. The most plausible explanation was inadvertent intake of the cockroach while the patient was consuming green gelatin shortly before the procedure.The patient was completely asymptomatic, and it was decided that no stool studies were warranted. The patient was discharged home with instructions to follow-up in the event of any GI symptoms. The endoscopic images from this case were shared with an entomologist, who identified the bug as the nymph stage of the German cockroach Blattella germanica.”

Bonus commentary from the journal:

“Cockroaches are insects of the order Blattaria, the name cockroach deriving from the Spanish word cucaracha and the order name from the Greek and Latin word Blatta for insect. There are >4000 species of cockroach, of which only 30 are associated with human ...