PEDIATRICS Vol. 72 No. 4 October 1983, pp. 579-580
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Worms in Diaper

ARTHUR G. WEINBERG MD1

1 Children's Medical Center, Dallas, TX 75235

To the Editor.—

In a recent letter,1 Ruttner called attention to the presence of housefly maggots in soiled diapers as a cause for parental misidentification of stool parasites. Recently, a mother brought a clean diaper with "worms" to our acute care clinic. The diaper contained more than 20 slender brown "worms," each 1.5 mm long, which moved in an undulating manner (Figs 1 and 2). Closer examination disclosed tiny caterpillars. Tim Friedlander, an entomologist at Texas A&M University, identified these as first-stage larvae of a pyralid moth, probably of the subfamily Pyraustidae, a harmless garden pest.