This summer’s scare? Brain-eating amoebas.
A 9-year-old water-sport-loving Kansas girl died earlier this month after contracting primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), caused by Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba found in fresh water.
Now health officials are advising people to take precautions while swimming in warm water.
While PAM infections have only struck 132 people in the past 50 years, they are incredibly fatal. Only three of those 132 people have been confirmed survivors, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The amoebas thrive in fresh water heated by the summer sun. Think lakes, rivers and hot springs. They’ve also been found in untreated swimming pools, but ocean swimmers should be safe.
Experts say, in order for it to infect swimmers, the N. fowleri needs to go through the nasal passages into the brain, which can happen by diving, water skiing or use of a neti pot with infected water.
“It literally climbs through a natural conduit to the brain,” Dr. Clayton Wiley, director of the division of neuropathology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told NBC News.
“Once it’s in the brain it aggressively destroys tissue. The popular term is ‘eats.’ But it’s just surviving on the biological matter in your brain at that point. It’s a bad bug.”
Theoretically, the risk may rise in years to come due to global warming, as water temperatures in the 70s and 80s create a more amenable environment for the amoebas.