A 58-year-old woman working outdoors on a Greek island sneezed on Oct. 15, 2025, and watched what she described as "worms" come out of her nose. An ear, nose and throat specialist removed 10 fly larvae and one pupa from her maxillary sinus. The pupa is the part that was not supposed to be there.
The case, reported by researchers in Athens and Heraklion in the March 2026 issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, documents a sheep bot fly reaching the pupal stage inside a human host. The authors state plainly that pupation of Oestrus ovis within any mammalian host is considered biologically implausible. Genetic sequencing matched the specimens to the species with 100% identity against reference sequences in GenBank.
