Worse than a zombie attack is the "brain eating amoeba",
Naegleria fowleri. It is a single cell organism, not actually an amoeba, that is 95% lethal to humans.
Three people have died this year from the protist that enters the brain and feeds on the tissue via warm, shallow water in which humans frolic in the
southern US. It has several forms from cysts, to flagellates, to blob forms called trophozoites
[photo courtesy CDC]. The protist is more closely related to
Trypanosoma, the organisms that cause sleeping sickness and Chagas disease.
Children infected by the microorganism exhibit headaches, nausea and high fever, and develop loss of balance, seizures and hallucinations in the later stages of infection. Death typically occurs three to seven days after the symptoms begin. Victims usually die of meningoencephalitis or swelling of the brain. The protist is not a human parasite, but through accident gets forced into nasal passages where it travels into the brain looking for food. There, it dines on neurons. There is only record of one person surviving an infection in 1978. The primary treatment with injected anti-fungal medication amphotericin B is not entirely effective. Fortunately, infection by
Naeglaria is quite rare.
