There is a junior Olympian in Texas fighting for his life against N. fowleri, more commonly referred to as the brain-eating amoeba. The brain-eating amoeba usually resides in fresh water, such as lakes and unclean pools. It enters through the nose of the victim and causes irreparable brain damage or death. In a report by ABC News, the family of the victim says they suspect that he was infected by the rare illness while he was swimming in a lake with his high school track teammates on August 13th. A week later, the teenager had a headache and a fever before becoming disoriented and confused.
Soon after his arrival at the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, doctors suspect the N. fowleri amoeba was to blame. “When a doctor comes in teary eyes, crying you know it’s not good,” said the victim’s mother during an interview with KTRK-TV in Houston. “Coming from a lake you wouldn’t think he’s going to the doctor’s office and they tell you he has a couple days to live,” added the father.
The teenager, a star athlete and junior Olympian, was reportedly put into a chemically-induced coma, had a hole drilled in his skull to relieve pressure and was cooled in an attempt to preserve body function.
Dr. William Shaffner, an expert on infectious diseases from Vanderbilt Medical School, claims that the hospital may be administering a drug called miltefosine that has been approved in other countries for combatting amoebas and parasites. Shaffner says that the drug is a “major resource available,” but also admits that “This is going to be a life-treating terribly serious, terribly sad infection.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, only three out of 132 reported cases had survivors between 1963 and 2013.
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