Brain-eating, 97% fatality rate? Brain-eating amoeba reappears in US

On July 9, 2022, the Fox News website reported that a Missouri tourist swimming in a lake in Iowa was invaded by a "brain-eating amoeba" and the water was subsequently closed.

The tourist is being treated in an intensive care unit at a hospital, and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources is working with the CENTERS for Disease Control and Prevention to test the waters involved.

A lot of people might be horrified at first sight by the name, "Brain-eating amoeba"? What kind of bug is this? Would it eat a man's brain and kill him? It's like in a disaster movie, crawling into the brain and feeding on neurons and brain cells. Actually, the brain eating worm is called amoeba, to be precise, naegli fowleri amoeba, and it doesn't actually eat the brain of a human being, it's just a metaphor.

Naegria fowleri was first discovered in the 1960s, and so far there have been 154 confirmed cases in the United States, with only four deaths, a 97% mortality rate!

In 2013, a 12-year-old Boy from La Bel, Florida, died 20 days later after contracting naegli foederi while wakeboarding with friends in a ditch near his home.

In the summer of 2016, Sebastian Deleon, a 16-year-old boy in Broward County, Florida, died shortly after contracting naegleamoeba folestri after swimming several times in a small local pond.

In September 2020, the city of Jackson Lake, Texas, issued a disaster declaration: A deadly microbe, naegleamoeba fowleri, was found in the city's water supply, shutting it down for about 60 days and banning some 20,000 residents from using water except to flush toilets.

Let's get to know naeglia fowleri specifically.

Naegleria fowleri amoeba, said to be a worm, is actually a kind of eukaryotic single-celled microorganism, they are only 10-30 microns, and our hair diameter is generally around 60 microns, so we can not see this kind of creature.

Although their head is small, but "five organs", they have a mouth, pharynx, and anus. Because of their different ways of reproduction, they sometimes resemble round balls called cysts in their lives. Sometimes they become polygonal and become trophozoites. In the trophozoite stage, they can stretch out their hands and feet and move quickly. As they move, their shape changes constantly, so they are called amoeba.

Amoebas like to live in hot and humid conditions. They are found in warm water above 25 degrees Celsius, and flourish most at about 45 degrees Celsius. Therefore, in the United States, they tend to be found in the south in summer. They are found in nature in rivers, ponds, puddles and other bodies of water, and even in hot springs and wet mud.Resistance to Gerry's blessing amoeba generally enter the body through the nostrils, and this is the company's blessing now find the only access histolytica infection in the human body, however, there are a few cases without YouYongShi and contact with water, have also been infected, as a result, the scientists speculate that the resistance to Gerry's blessing amoebas there may be other ways to infect humans, such as from air suction, But it's still being studied, and the probability of this infection occurring is very low.

The naegleria fortesiae make their way into the nasal cavity, where they make contact with the mucous membrane, then travel along the olfactory nerve and into the brain through a structure called the sieve plate.

Once in the brain, they multiply rapidly and spread along the meninges to the center of the brain, causing purulent meningitis, cerebrovascular bleeding, and parenchymal necrosis.

Because naegleria fowleri eat bacteria and other microorganisms in nature, they host many bacteria inside their bodies and may also carry various bacteria into their brains, causing bacterial inflammation.

It only takes five to eight days for the amoeba to penetrate the brain and for the symptoms to appear in the human body.

The initial symptoms of an infected person are headache, vomiting, sore throat and runny nose, which are very similar to the symptoms of a cold. In addition, the patient will lose the sense of smell and taste. At this time, the patient may mistake it for a cold and do not go to the doctor, or go to the doctor, but the pathogen is too hidden, and is misdiagnosed.