A NEWLY married woman who went to see the doctor about an itchy groin was left stunned to discover that a maggot had embedded itself in her skin.

The 36-year-old finally sought medical help after developing a red blister-like mark on her inner leg around two months after her honeymoon in Belize.

The unnamed woman, from Tampa, Florida, was given antibiotics after visiting her GP but failed to see any improvements in her condition.

She then decided to go to Tampa General Hospital, where the mark left doctors dumbfounded.

Some speculated that the mark may have been a cyst while others contemplated it being an ingrown hair.

Still unsatisfied with their answers, she decided to visit the Tampa’s Memorial Hospital where the horrific truth finally wriggled out.

Dr Enrico Camporesi noticed the skin around the sore had become hard, and decided to investigate if there may be an egg or bean beneath the surface.

It was only after he consulted with a surgeon that the pair discovered the mark was in fact a live creature.

The unnamed woman was immediately given local anaesthetic and surgeons got to work removing what turned out to be a maggot, known as a human botfly larva.

The woman’s sore healed within a week and she was finally relieved of her constant groin itch.

Her weird case has also been listed in the Journal of Investigative Medicine High Impact Case Reports.

According to the medical journal’s authors, people who have been infected with the same type of maggot will often feel the creature wriggling around under the skin when they shower or attempt to cover the wound up.

If left untreated, the adult larva will usually fall out of the skin within six weeks of infection, before maturing into an adult botfly.

While the tiny creature is rare in the United States, it is extremely common in the Tropics.

The botfly larva can easily be killed by taking away its air supply by putting Vaseline or similar on the skin where the lump is.

But the larva will still need to be extracted from the human body.

Adult botflies have non-functional mouth parts and do not feed.