Death via Brain Amoeba
In February, the Florida Department of Health in Charlotte County reported that an unnamed man had been killed by a brain-eating infection of the amoeba Naegleria fowleri.
Human brain infections of N. fowleri are unusual enough by their rarity alone. The amoeba naturally lives in freshwater and normally only gobbles down bacteria. Simply swallowing the amoeba by ingesting contaminated water won’t make you sick—it has to directly reach your brain, which can happen when water goes up the nose. Since the discovery of the amoeba in the 1960s, there have only been around 150 such cases documented in the U.S. Sadly, once it’s inside the brain, the infection is nearly always lethal.
This case was even stranger than most, though. The man was believed to have contracted it by rinsing his sinuses with unboiled tap water, the first known instance of this happening in Florida (it’s usually caught from swimming). And it’s thought to be the first case in the U.S. documented in the winter, which is typically when the amoeba goes dormant.
