Brain-Eating Amoeba

Brain-Eating Amoeba Kills Arizona Boy

CDC: Cases Are Spiking In 2007

POSTED: 7:44 pm PDT September 26, 2007

UPDATED: 8:59 am PDT September 28, 2007

PHOENIX -- A 14-year-old Lake Havasu boy has become the sixth victim to die nationwide this year of a microscopic organism that attacks the body through the nasal cavity, quickly eating its way to the brain.Aaron Evans died Sept. 17 of Naegleria fowleri, an organism doctors said he probably picked up a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu.According to the Centers For Disease Control, Naegleria infected 23 people from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials said they've noticed a spike in cases, with six Naegleria-related cases so far -- all of them fatal.Such attacks are extremely rare, though some health officials have put their communities on high alert, telling people to stay away from warm, standing water.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational water-born illnesses for the CDC."This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

Organism Lives In Lake Bottoms

Though infections tend to be found in southern states, Naegleria has been found almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even some swimming pools. Still, the CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.The amoeba typically live in lake bottoms, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment. Beach said people become infected when they wade through shallow water and stir up the bottom. If someone allows water to shoot up the nose -- say, by doing a cannonball off a cliff -- the amoeba can latch onto the person's olfactory nerve.The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up to the brain.People who are infected tend to complain of a stiff neck, headaches and fevers, Beach said. In the later stages, they'll show signs of brain damage such as hallucinations and behavioral changes.Once infected, most people have little chance of survival. Some drugs have been effective stopping the amoeba in lab experiments, but people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said."Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," Beach said.Researchers still have much to learn about Naegleria, Beach said. For example, it seems that children are more likely to get infected, and boys are infected more often than girls. Experts don't know why."Boys tend to have more boisterous activities (in water), but we're not clear," he said.

Texas, Florida Report Cases

In addition to the Arizona case, health officials reported two cases in Texas and three more in central Florida this year. In response, central Florida authorities started an amoeba telephone hot line advising people to avoid warm, standing water, or any areas with obvious algae blooms.Texas health officials also have issued news releases about the dangers of amoeba attacks and to be cautious around water. People "seem to think that everything can be made safe, including any river, any creek, but that's just not the case," said Doug McBride, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.Lake Havasu City officials also are discussing how to deal with rare amoeba attacks in the wake of Aaron Evans' death. "Some folks think we should be putting up signs. Some people think we should close the lake," city spokesman Charlie Cassens said. City leaders haven't yet decided what to do.Beach warned that people shouldn't panic about the dangers of brain-eating amoeba. Infections are extremely rare when compared with the number of times a year people come into contact with water. And there have been occasional years during the past two decades that experts noticed a similar spike in infections.The easiest way to prevent infection, Beach said, is to simply plug your nose when swimming or diving in fresh water."You'd have to have water going way up in your nose to begin with" to be infected, he said.

Aaron's Infection Started With Headache

The Evans family lives within eyesight of Lake Havasu, a bulging strip of the Colorado River that separates Arizona from California. Temperatures hover in the triple digits all summer, and like almost everyone else, the Evans family looks to the lake to cool off.On Sept. 8, he brought Aaron, his two other children and his parents to Lake Havasu to celebrate his birthday. They ate sandwiches and spent a few hours splashing around one of the beaches."For a week, everything was fine," he said.Then Aaron got the headache that wouldn't go away. Evans took him to the hospital, and doctors thought his son was suffering from meningitis. Aaron was rushed to another hospital in Las Vegas.Evans tried to reassure his son, but he had no idea what was wrong. On Sept. 17, Aaron stopped breathing as David held him in his arms."He was brain dead," David said. Only later did doctors realize the boy had been infected with Naegleria."My kids won't ever swim on Lake Havasu again."

The CDC Fact Sheet on Naegleria

Living On The Edge

From the Toronto Star:

Bell Island should be a beacon for history buffs, but its WWII history is largely hidden

Sep 20, 2007 04:30 AM

Jim Byers
Staff Reporter

BELL ISLAND, NFLD. –It's the only place in North America directly damaged by the Germans in the Second World War. Nearby are the wrecks of four ships sunk by German U-boats, where 69 soldiers went to their deaths.

It should be a beacon for history buffs. But when you arrive on Bell Island, just a few minutes from St. John's, there is no sign of what happened here. Not a Heritage Canada marker. Not a government of Newfoundland placard. Nothing.

It's not until you follow the signs for the shop of a man who makes cement animals that you spot a small roadside sign pointing the way to a "Seaman's memorial and picnic area."

It's easy to miss the turnoff. And at the bottom of the hill, you arrive in a tumbledown RV park, where the only memorial is a patch of grass with a couple of plaques, a flagpole and a giant anchor.

Bell Island, only a few miles from St. John's in the middle of Conception Bay, has stunning cliffs, vertical slides of chalky brown shale and sandstone pounded by impossibly blue ocean waves.

There's a chatty lighthouse keeper who'll give you a free tour of his place. Visitors can check out the iron ore museum showcasing the mines that once reached miles and miles underground, which is why the Germans attacked in the first place.

A mysterious crater appeared on one end of the island in the 1970s, an occurrence some blamed on a ball of lightning, but which others insist was the doing of U.S. army mad scientist or even the Russians.

It's a truly magical place. But aside from the No. 2 mine iron ore museum, which is a sophisticated and highly worthwhile stop, they don't do much here to advertise one of the best day trips you can take in Newfoundland.

Karen Seward shrugs when asked about the lack of signage for the German bombing site.

Her grandfather worked the mines and features in legendary photographer Yousuf Karsh's collection of Bell Island pictures on display at the museum.

"We think like Bell Islanders," she says. "If you're lost, you'll knock on someone's door and they'll take you there."

Luckily, the No. 2 mine signs are a lot easier to find.

The first things you'll probably notice in the museum are the stunning photos, some by Karsh. One shows a boy who can't be more than 12 years old, surrounded by four older, soot-covered workers, three of whom look as though they returned from the depths of hell.

Another shows a worker with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a lunch box popping out from under a well-muscled arm. The story goes that Karsh was here in the summer of 1954 to photograph Premier Joey Smallwood and his Cabinet but ventured to the island and was taken with what he saw. The originals of his Bell Island photos are in Ottawa's National Archives.

Seward explains workers at the mine tunneled miles under Conception Bay, about half a kilometre below the water. All told, 70 million tonnes of ore were shipped from the world's largest subterranean iron ore mine from 1895 to 1966.

Workers started as early as age eight or nine, picking unwanted rocks off the conveyor belts that brought the precious ore out of the depths below the bay. Outside the museum is a giant heap of unused rocks hauled out over the years.

"My son," Seward says, "calls that the `Monument to Child Labour.'"

A short tour takes you deep underground and gives visitors a sense of what it was like for the workers. Back inside the museum is a collection of various instruments and household items that illustrate the life of the miners in the depths of the earth. Included is a box of soap; cruelly, the label reads "Sunlight."

The 10-year-old museum has four full-time employees.

"Don't think that's much, do ya?" Seward asks a visitor. "Well, that means four more families can stay on this island and that's pretty special."

There used to be 15,000 people on the island. Many fled when the mines shut down; a lot of them to southern Ontario. There are now only 3,000, but the population is slowly rebuilding.

"It's a great place," Seward explains. "Ninety-five per cent of people here know my kids' names if they see them on the road."

Seward said Bell Island children are raised to be independent.

"They'll leave, of course," she says. "But they'll come back."

There aren't many more scenic spots in the province than the lighthouse at the north end of the island. It's a cool place to learn something about the 50 or so lighthouses that dot Newfoundland.

"Been here more than 20 years," says Bill Clarke in a patented Newfoundland accent. "We used to be out there on the bluff," he says, gesturing toward a small point now empty of buildings, "But a government geologist came and they found some caves under the point.

"They said it was only a matter of time before we might tumble down into the ocean, so they moved the lighthouse back here."

He also explains the difference between a Clark and a Clarke.

"The good Clarkes have an `e' on the end, or so they say back in England," he says. "The ones without an `e' are the bad `uns."

Clarke lovingly shows off an old foghorn – a two-metre high, hulking metal thing that's probably five metres long. It's no longer operational, but Clarke plays a tape of different sounding lighthouse horns used to emit.

"This here was three seconds long, then 27 seconds of silence. Other lighthouses had different tones, so if you were fogged in, you could tell by the sound just where you were."

After a clamber up some metal spiral stairs and a few steps up a steep ladder, visitors are shown the light itself.

A lone Canadian flag flaps below, overlooking the Avalon peninsula nearly five kilometres away and the blue-green Atlantic.

There's a sign warning tourists not to venture out on to the point where the lighthouse used to sit, but Clarke explains many folks go have a look-see.

"Just don't get too close to the edge."

The small effort is hugely worthwhile. You get a great view of two towers of rock rising from the bay, with a huge, V-shaped chasm between them. The tops are dotted with conifers and dozens of birds, while the bottoms are battered by breaking waves of deep blue water. At the bottom of one of the towers, a small cave leaves a hole for surf to surge through.

It's breathtaking.

--

I'm posting this mainly because this is where my father was born; my friend Alan Hawco once suggested the submerged mines as a good location for a story -- and he's right.