12 year-old dies from a brain-eating amoeba. Could this happen to you?

Executive summary

Brain eating amoebas (Naegleria fowleri) sound like they are science fiction, but they are real. They’ve killed over 150 people in the US in the last 60 years so the risks are absurdly low, but they aren’t zero.

Here are the ways you can minimize this happening to you:

1. Never swim in warm natural water (over 77 degrees) that hasn’t been tested.

2. NEVER get untreated water up your nose. Use nose clips, avoid forceful underwater activities, etc. By far the best solution. Swallowing the amoeba is safe, but getting it up your nose is a big no-no.

3. Swimming pools are chlorinated so are generally safe from Naegleria fowleri. The organism simply cannot survive at recommended disinfectant levels.

4. NEVER do a nasal rinse with tap water. NEVER.

5. Options for nasal rinse:

   1. Distilled water (the best option; this is what I always do).

   2. Water that has been boiled for 3 minutes then cooled before using

   3. Water that you’ve added chlorine dioxide (CDS) to get to 10ppm and let it sit for 30 minutes before using. This is not guaranteed. If your tap water contains a lot of organic matter, this may not work. However, “Jeff” who made the CDS video, told me amoebas are killed in just 1 minute in water with just 1.5ppm of CDS.

After the fact treatments

Experimental treatments are under study for actual early Naegleria exposures, e.g., intranasal miltefosine and amphotericin B protocols.

If you ever put yourself in a situation and you realize you screwed up, it’s possible that doing aggressive nasal rinses as well as nebulization using distilled water where you add CDS to achieve a final concentration of 10-20ppm might save your life. It certainly won’t hurt as this is well in the range of common usage. You’d want to do that ASAP after exposure.

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