“Is this an earthworm?” asks this reader about the red worm pictured below. “It was in our upstairs toilet.”

“We are hoping it’s not coming from our body!” she adds.

In our opinion, this does indeed look like an earthworm, so our reader need not fret. In fact, it is not entirely uncommon for earthworms to make their way up people’s toilets. Sometimes, this can be due to a leak in an underground pipe: the earthworm will find the crack in the pipe and wiggle their way through.

Signs that our reader can look out for to see if she might have a leak include: foul-smelling water, irregularities in water pressure, and discolored water. If she thinks she might be experiencing a leak, then she should contact a professional to deal with the issue.

To deal with the earthworm, we advise that our reader simply pick it up (gently) and take it outside where it can roam freely.

With all of that in mind, if our reader has reasonable cause to believe that this worm actually did come from her body, then she should disregard everything we wrote above. In this case, we recommend that she consult a medical parasitologist. A medical parasitologist is a doctor which specializes in parasitic infections. They would be able to identify an organism that came from our reader’s body.

So, if she wants to consult a medical parasitologist, then what we can recommend is that she do one or more of the following:

1) Search for a medical parasitologist in her area using this directory of medical parasitology consultants: https://www.astmh.org/for-astmh-members/clinical-consultants-directory.
2) Search for a local parasitologist by doing a Google search for “medical parasitologist (name of the closest big city)” or “tropical medicine specialist (name of the closest big city)”.
3) Get in touch with Dr. Omar Amin at the Parasitology Center at https://www.parasitetesting.com.

In conclusion, we think that the worm our reader found is an earthworm. Of course, if she thinks it came from her body, then she should disregard this and consult a medical parasitologist instead. We wish her the very best.