Las Vegas Teen Dies From Brain-Eating Amoeba After Swimming at Lake Mead

Experts said the death of a teen in the Las Vegas area from a rare brain-eating amoeba should prompt caution and not panic among people who enjoy rivers, springs, and freshwater lakes, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Brian Labus, a former public health epidemiologist, said the naturally occurring organism called Naegleria fowleri, dubbed the brain-eating amoeba, gets people's attention because of its name. He made it clear that it is a very rare disease.

Investigators believe the teen victim was exposed to the amoeba in the warm waters at Lake Mead. The southern Nevada health district did not identify the teenager who passed away but said he might have been exposed to the microscopic organism during the weekend of September 30th in the Kingman Wash area on the Arizona side of the Colorado River reservoir behind the Hoover Dam.

Rare amoeba case recorded in Nevada

The district publicized the teen's case on Wednesday following confirmation of the cause of death from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Labus said that the CDC had recorded just 154 cases of infection and death from the amoeba in the United States since 1962, almost half of which were tallied in Texas and Florida. Only one case was reported in the state of Nevada before this week.

Labus said he would not say there is an alarm to sound for this. He added that people need to be smart about it in places where this rare amoeba lives. The district and the Lake Mead national recreation area noted that the amoeba only infects people by entering the person's nose and migrating to the brain. The disease is almost always fatal.

News releases from the two agencies said that it could not infect people if swallowed and is not spread from person to person. Both agencies advised people to avoid jumping or diving into warm bodies of water, especially during the summer, and to keep their heads above water in hot springs or other untreated geothermal waters.

Read Also: 25% of Maternal Deaths in the US in 2020 and 2021 Are Due to COVID-19

Professor says illness is 99 percent preventable

Dennis Kyle, a professor of infectious diseases and cellular biology, told the Guardian that it is 97 percent fatal but 99 percent preventable. He said people could protect themselves by not jumping into water that gets up their noses or using nose plugs.

The amoeba in question causes primary amebic meningoencephalitis. It is a brain infection with symptoms resembling encephalitis or meningitis that initially includes fever, headache, nausea, or vomiting. The symptoms then progress to stiff neck, seizures, and coma, which can lead to death.

Symptoms can start one to 12 days after exposure to the amoeba, and death usually happens within about five days. There is no known effective treatment for this illness, and according to Kyle, a diagnosis almost always comes too late for the patient.

Related Article: Long Waiting Lists and High Costs Hinder Many Children's Access to Mental Health Care