The woman contracted a fatal infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba and died eight days after developing symptoms.
A Texas woman died from an infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba days after she cleaned her sinuses using tap water, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention case report.
The woman, an otherwise healthy 71-year-old, developed “severe neurologic symptoms,” including fever, headache and an altered mental status, four days after she filled a nasal irrigation device with tap water from her RV’s water system at a Texas campsite, the CDC report said.
She was treated for primary amebic meningoencephalitis — a brain infection caused by Naegleria fowleri, often referred to as the “brain-eating amoeba.” Despite treatment, the woman experienced seizures and died from the infection eight days after she developed symptoms, the agency said.
Well it shouldn’t. We’re taking a lot of knowledge for granted when normally, we aren’t all that bright in the first place.
A lot of the theory learned isn’t met in practice, so it’s difficult to understand or recognize it.
I mean, come on, how often does ‘brain-eating amoeba’ even come up as a subject in day to day life? Hard to pay attention to stuff that doesn’t frequent your area of activities.
I see stories about it at least once a year, and its the sort of thing that sticks out, even though I rarely flush my sinuses.
Well, I don’t. It’s the first time in 7 to 10 years since I last heard of it. It’s not common at all for me and doesn’t even cross my mind because I lacked reoccurring contact with this kind of information to have it a priority.
This difference in knowledge is also a difference in awareness , so it’s not that baffling that most people don’t share the same kinds of wariness.
We don’t know the same things so we pay attention to things in separate ways.
I have heard of getting brain eating amoebas, mostly from swimming in lakes or still water. I think this is the first time I’ve heard about them coming from using a nettle pot. Looking it up, it looks like a lot of cases come from nettle pots, but “a lot” is relative. There are only a dozen or so cases a year from any source. I still wonder if any of those cases really come from city water or if they are from well and cistern water like this lady used. Either way, following the instructions that come with the pot would have saved those people.
They theoretically could come from tap water. Reservoirs of treated water can be open to the atmosphere, and accessible to wildlife. Chlorine and dilution mitigate most of the risk, but not all of it.
Yeah, but i also dont put water up my nose to cleanse what my mucous membranes already do.