A rare, brain-eating amoeba is spreading across the United States and appears to infect people in states where it has not been seen before. Naegleria fowleri is a crawling, single-celled organism that lives in freshwater lakes, rivers and hot springs along with other Naegleria species. But the difference is that this type of amoeba likes to eat brains!
Fowleri is the only naegleria species that can infect humans, and it usually does so in environments like shallow waters with high temperatures where it thrives. Infections (though incredibly rare) typically occur when people put their heads under water. The amoeba enters through the nose and travels up to the brain. It causes primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a disease that is 97 percent “almost always fatal.”
Once in the brain, it begins to destroy brain tissue and produces symptoms similar to bacterial meningitis, such as headache, fever, stiff neck and confusion. A lack of attention to the environment, seizures, and coma also occur in patients, and the disease usually causes death within five days of the onset of symptoms. Of the 154 people known to have been infected by amoeba since 1962, only four have survived.
Fortunately, infections are incredibly rare, with only 31 infections reported in the past decade. However, areas where the amoeba are found are expanding further around the US as temperatures rise.
Douglas County Health Director Dr. “Our regions are getting warmer,” Lindsey Huse said at a press conference following the death of a child in Nebraska. We’ll see you grow.”
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