{"id":8781,"date":"2018-06-24T13:09:50","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T17:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=8781"},"modified":"2018-11-04T13:31:08","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T18:31:08","slug":"migrating-facial-worm-time-vote-favorite-cartoon-caption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/migrating-facial-worm-time-vote-favorite-cartoon-caption\/2018\/06\/24\/","title":{"rendered":"A Migrating Facial Worm, and Time to Vote for Your Favorite Cartoon Caption"},"content":{"rendered":"
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National Library of Medicine<\/p><\/div>\n

Over on the New England Journal of Medicine,\u00a0<\/em>there’s a picture on the “Images in Clinical Medicine”<\/a> series that’s getting quite a bit of attention.<\/p>\n

And it’s no wonder. This 32-year-old woman in Russia went to her ophthalmologist with a series of selfies she took over a 2-week period.\u00a0The pictures demonstrated nodules (bumps) that moved around her face — under and over her left eye, then to her lip.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be the parasite\u00a0Dirofilaria repens —<\/i>\u00a0of course, isn’t it always?\u00a0—\u00a0<\/i>which is a zoonotic filarial nematode.<\/p>\n

In plain English, it was a worm. A worm that usually infects\u00a0dogs.<\/em>\u00a0So a dog worm was crawling around under the skin on her face. Which she got from a mosquito bite.<\/p>\n

If you’re looking for yet another motivation to break out the DEET or picaridin this summer, look no further!<\/p>\n

And behold, the power of the yucky ID case report.\u00a0<\/a>Big news indeed! Perhaps citations in Cosmopolitan<\/a> and BuzzFeed<\/a> will boost NEJM’s<\/em> impact factor.<\/p>\n

In other big news, our last Caption Contest<\/a> drew a flurry of responses, both on the site and on Twitter<\/a>. Not only that, the quality of the responses was exceptionally high, rating 9.32 (a record) on the validated Funniness Scale for an ID Blog.<\/p>\n

Which makes me conclude that either the cartoon was exceptionally humorous (thank you, Anne!), or you are becoming pros at submitting captions — likely both. Well done!<\/p>\n

As usual, our high-speed computer utilized the patented NEJM Journal Watch<\/em> algorithm to select the top captions. Most groan-worthy puns (e.g., “I hear you’re having brelly-pain”, “That mole has really sprung” ) were automatically excluded based on Rule 17.42 — but I overturned this rule using executive action for a particularly good pun that made us giggle.<\/p>\n

And note, we’ve added one just for ID and Microbiology Geeks — see if you can guess which one.<\/p>\n

Now it’s your turn to pick the favorite. Have at it!<\/p>\n

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What is your favorite caption for this cartoon?<\/strong><\/p>