A 25-YEAR-OLD woman with a sore throat was shocked to discover the culprit was actually a worm alive and wriggling in her tonsils.

The woman in Tokyo, Japan, had gone to hospital complaining of five days of an unpleasant sensation in the back of her throat.

When doctors took a look, they realized it was a job for the tweezers.

The medics found a 4 centimeter-long roundworm alive and moving around in her left tonsil, where it was busy shedding its outer cuticle.

According to a medical journal, the little critter likely set up home in the patient’s tonsil via raw fish dishes she had been eating.

The species plucked from her throat was a nematode roundworm, according to the case study in The American Medical Journal of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine.

The journal said the patient had suffered about five days of irritation and pain on the left side of her throat after eating assorted sashimi, a traditional Japanese raw fish delicacy.

The journal said the woman’s symptoms rapidly improved after medics removed the worm using tweezers.

The roundworm in her case was described as a Pseudoterranova azarasi type. The worm can trigger nasty infections in patients’ stomachs, usually after diners consume third-stage larvae in raw or undercooked marine fish. (SD-Agencies)