Autumn2004
Inactive
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 2,440
- Reaction score
- 19
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070929/ap_on_he_me/killer_amoeba;_ylt=AlQxWJbtq04MU2H8W2.ap5la24cA
PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.
According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.
After doing more tests, doctors said Aaron probably picked up the amoeba a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu, a popular man-made lake on the Colorado River between Arizona and California.
Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria lives almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even dirty swimming pools, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment.
"Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," he said.
"For a week, everything was fine," Evans said.
Then Aaron got the headache that wouldn't go away. At the hospital, doctors first suspected meningitis. Aaron was rushed to another hospital in Las Vegas.
"He asked me at one time, 'Can I die from this?'" David Evans said. "We said, 'No, no.'"
On Sept. 17, Aaron stopped breathing as his father held him in his arms.
"He was brain dead," Evans said. Only later did doctors and the CDC determine that the boy had been infected with Naegleria.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070929/ap_on_he_me/killer_amoeba;_ylt=AlQxWJbtq04MU2H8W2.ap5la24cA
PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.
According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.
After doing more tests, doctors said Aaron probably picked up the amoeba a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu, a popular man-made lake on the Colorado River between Arizona and California.
Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria lives almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even dirty swimming pools, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment.
"Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," he said.
"For a week, everything was fine," Evans said.
Then Aaron got the headache that wouldn't go away. At the hospital, doctors first suspected meningitis. Aaron was rushed to another hospital in Las Vegas.
"He asked me at one time, 'Can I die from this?'" David Evans said. "We said, 'No, no.'"
On Sept. 17, Aaron stopped breathing as his father held him in his arms.
"He was brain dead," Evans said. Only later did doctors and the CDC determine that the boy had been infected with Naegleria.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070929/ap_on_he_me/killer_amoeba;_ylt=AlQxWJbtq04MU2H8W2.ap5la24cA