Officials at Lake Mead are warning visitors not to submerge their heads below the waters of a popular hot spring near the Hoover Dam over fears it’s contaminated with a brain-eating amoeba.
The deadly organism Naegleria fowleri has been found lurking in the hot springs when conditions are right, officials at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area have warned.
‘Naegleria fowleri has been found in hot springs,’ read a statement released this week.
‘This amoeba enters through the nose and can cause a deadly infection that causes a sudden and severe headache, fever, and vomiting. It is advised to avoid diving, splashing water, or submerging your head in hot spring water.’
The death of two-year-old Woodrow Turner Bundy in July was attributed to a brain-eating amoeba which is so deadly that only four people in the US have ever caught it and lived to tell the tale.
Visitors to the Hoover Dam and the hot springs of Lake Mead have been told not to submerge their heads in the nearby hot springs due to a possible brain-eating amoeba
N. fowleri is a brain-eating amoeba that causes the sudden onset of serious symptoms and often leads to brain damage and death
Bundy’s family told media at the time that he had contracted the amoeba a few weeks earlier while swimming in Ash Springs near the town of Alamo, which is about 100 miles north of Las Vegas.
His parents first noticed something was not right when the boy began suffering ‘flu-like symptoms’ and he was rushed to the hospital, where doctors first thought he had meningitis, but then realized too late he actually had Naegleria fowleri.
This amoeba can live in warm freshwater environments – like hot springs – and can cause a disease called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM).
PAM generally results in severe brain damage. The infection is, in fact, mostly fatal.
The amoeba has a fatality rate of 97 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There are millions of exposed to the amoeba every year, but N. fowleri infection is rare.
The CDC reported fewer than five cases of infection annually for each year from 2013 to 2022.
Statistically, most brain-eating amoeba infections occur in boys aged 14 years old and younger. CDC experts remain unsure of why this is.
The amoeba has a fatality rate of 97 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Statistically, most brain-eating amoeba infections occur in boys aged 14 years old and younger. CDC experts remain unsure of why this is
The single cell organism is found in its highest concentrations in freshwater that is 75 degrees or hotter and remains that temperature for extended periods of time.
The Lake Mead park often closes some trails leading to hot springs when summer temperatures become extremely hot. Those trails are typically reopened on October 1.
Some of the springs, however, remain accessible via the Colorado River, on which the Hoover Dam is formed.
Kali Hardig, now 22, and from Arkansas, was only 12 years old when she was struck by Naegleria fowleri, which doctors think she caught at a water park.
They told her it was a ‘death sentence’ and gave her just four days to live, but a decade on she is swimming again and, last November, became a mother for the first time. She only occasionally struggles with blurry vision in her left eye due to scar tissue from the disease.
Woodrow Bundy died after getting infected with brain-eating amoeba in July this year
Kali Hardig, 22, survived her infection with the brain-eating amoeba from a decade ago. She became a mother last November with her daughter Adalynn (shown with Kali) now being 10 months old. She also still has occasional blurry vision in her left eye
Caleb Ziegelbauer, 14, was infected with the amoeba about a year ago after swimming at a river estuary. He is now able to stand up, walk and somewhat talk, although he still needs a wheelchair
Fourteen-year-old Caleb Ziegelbauer, from Florida, is also now a year on from being infected with the microscopic species that kills 97 percent of its victims.
Caleb is now walking somewhat but the damage done to his brain means he needs to communicate with facial expressions and has to use a wheelchair.
Official records show 157 people in the US were infected with the disease between 1962 and 2022, of which only four survived.
Five deaths from the amoeba have been reported this year, with the latest being a one-year-old toddler from Arkansas who died on September 4.
There are fears warming temperatures will heat freshwater pools nationwide, leaving more people at risk of the amoeba.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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