A 12-year-old Florida boy has been infected with Naegleria fowleri, a brain-eating amoeba.
A 12-year-old Florida boy has been infected with Naegleria fowleri, a brain-eating amoeba.
The boy reportedly presented with flu-like symptoms, and when they intensified his family took him to the Miami Children’s Hospital. He is now in the intensive care unit there.
Naegleria fowleri lives in warm, freshwater sources like lakes and rivers, and enters the brain though the nose.
Symptoms typically take between a day and a week after the initial infection to appear and include headache, vomiting, and confusion. Lack of balance and the inability to focus on people and things have also been reported.
Sadly, the prognosis in general isn’t good, with the infection resulting in death 99 percent of the time.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t hope. It’s been reported that a girl who took in the amoeba at an Arkansas waterpark earlier in the summer is showing signs of recovery.
It has not yet been determined exactly where the boy encountered it.
Preventative measures include wearing nose plugs when swimming in freshwater, not putting your head under the surface, and not stirring up the mud on the bottom.
