Texas teen contracts rare brain-eating amoeba infection

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Texas teen contracts rare brain-eating amoeba infection
14-year-old is a junior Olympian
Reuters
First posted: Wednesday, August 26, 2015 02:47 PM EDT | Updated: Wednesday, August 26, 2015 03:33 PM EDT
AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas teenager is fighting for his life after contracting a rare brain-eating disease from swimming in a lake about 70 miles north of Houston, his parents have told a local broadcaster.
The 14-year-old, a junior Olympian and honour student, appears to have contracted the disease when he went swimming on Aug. 13 with his track team, his father Mike Riley told Houston broadcaster KTRK on Tuesday.
"You wouldn't think that you would go to a doctor's office and they'd tell you that your son has got a couple of days to live," Riley said in an exclusive interview.
The disease is caused by exposure to a single-celled organism known as Naegleria fowleri, often referred to as the brain-eating amoeba.
It is commonly found in warm freshwater such as lakes, rivers and hot springs, as well as soil. It usually infects people when contaminated water enters the body through the nose, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Contracting the brain disease is rare, it said.
The organism is most commonly encountered in the southern United States during the summer, when temperatures are highest, the CDC said. Of 133 people known to have been infected with it in the United States since 1962, only three have survived, the CDC said.
Texas teen contracts rare brain-eating amoeba infection | World | News | Toronto

 

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Also the ordinary Entamoeba histolytica can rarely cause the serious complication of the brain abscess.
But of course its route of infection is not by the nose; it mostly follows untreated amoebic dysentery, as a rare complication.
Such serious complications of the amoebiasis, like the perforation of the intestine, the liver abscess and the amoebic meningitis and even amoebic brain abscess were common before the use of metronidazole or flagyl.