Health officials added that: ‘These disease-causing organisms are naturally present in most lakes, ponds, and rivers but multiply rapidly in very warm and stagnant water.
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Officials with the Oklahoma Department of Health say a person was hospitalized after swimming in Lake Murray last week.
“If you’re going to use a neti pot, it’s probably not a bad idea to use sterile or filtered water”, says Steven Gordon, MD, chairman of the infectious disease department at the Cleveland Clinic, which has seen a few cases of Naegleria fowleri infections.
Other measures suggested included staying away from swimming in stagnant water, and to ‘[a]void swallowing water from rivers, lakes, streams, or stock ponds’. It is also possible to get it from dirty unchlorinated or under-chlorinated swimming pools.
The Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department confirmed the person was camping at the Ski Jump campground.
Naegleria Fowleri is known as the dreaded brain-eating amoeba because of its ability to cause a deadly brain infection called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM). Though, coined with the term “Brain Eating Amoeba”, the patient dies more due to the complications of acute inflammatory reaction (raised intracranial pressure) than the destructive enzymes secreted by N. fowleri.
The news of Boutain’s death was eerily similar to a report that surfaced in July of a 21-year-old woman who died of PAM after swimming in a lake in Reno, Nevada.
But according to the CDC, Naegleria fowleri infections are extremely rare in the U.S. Just 35 infections were reported from 2005 to 2014 and, of those infections, 31 people were infected after swimming.
The state health agency warned against ‘forcing water up the nose, ‘ ‘dunking your head into bodies of fresh water’.
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Anyone can be exposed to the disease when diving or submerging your head into contaminated water. From there the parasite travels to the brain and spinal cord and necrotizes or basically eats brain tissue. Typical symptoms may start after a day or two; headache, fever, nausea and vomiting. Later, symptoms may include stiff neck, seizures, hallucinations and coma. PAM can not be spread from person-to-person.
