Rare Brain-Eating Amoeba Claims Another Victim

Days after she took a swim near the Oklahoma-Texas border, a native of northern Michigan was dead. The cause: a rare infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba.

Kingsley native Elizabeth Knight, who died Aug. 10, first suffered a persistent headache after swimming in Oklahoma’s Lake Murray with her two children, ages 3 and 5. Doctors prescribed medication for a migraine headache and sent her home after she sought medical treatment, Knight’s boyfriend, Eric Bowers, told MLive.com.

The next day when Bowers checked on her, the Ardmore, OK, woman’s motor skills were gone and Knight was unable to speak. He thought her strange behavior was the result of the medication she’d been given at the hospital the day before.

As her condition deteriorated, he took her to the hospital and she was later transported by helicopter to an Oklahoma City hospital, where she was put on life support and later died.

“I didn’t even think this was going to be something that would kill her,” Bowers told MLive. “I thought it was a bug or a flu or something.”

Besides headaches, other symptoms of the disease include nausea and vomiting, fever, confusion, loss of balance, sensitivity to light, and a change in the sense of smell or taste.

The brain-eating amoeba – Naegleria fowleri – is commonly found in warm freshwater lakes, rivers and hot springs, and in soil, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In some very rare cases, Naegleria infections may occur when contaminated water from other sources, such as inadequately chlorinated swimming pools or heated and contaminated tap water, enters the nose.

The amoeba typically infects people after entering through the nose, then travels to the brain, where it causes an infection called primary amebic meningoencephalitis, or PAM, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As it was with 24-year-old Knight, it’s usually fatal. It’s rare, though, with only 133 reported infections in the United States since 1962, according to the CDC. Only three ot those who contracted the infection survived.

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There have been a spate of recent deaths from the single-cell organism. A 14-year-old star athlete from Houston died days from the start of his freshman year after swimming, and a California woman also died in June. She was initially diagnosed with meningitis, but as her condition continued to deteriorate, doctors determined brain-eating amoeba was the culprit.

The disease-causing organisms are naturally present in most lakes, ponds and rivers, but multiply quickly in very warm and stagnant waters, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

Knight’s parents, Mike and Alonie McKown, have joined with another parent, who also lost a child to the rare disease, in a petition drive to require mandatory reporting and possibly have lakes tested.

The petition was started by Dr.Sandra Gompf, a Florida physician whose son, Philip Gompf, died Aug. 17, 2009, after wakeboarding on a lake.

“The word ‘rare’ gets used you assume you’re not going to be the one, but statistics don’t mean a lot when it’s you,” Gompf said.

The McKowns can relate.

“We want to make sure everyone is aware of this organism, how rapidly fatal this organism is; not only to the public, but to the medical community,” Mike McKown told KFOR-TV.

Though infections are rare, high temperatures in summer months elevate the risk of encountering the organism. Most infections occur in July, August and September after prolonged heat, when water temperatures are warmer and water levels are lower, Accuweather.com said.

The parasite doesn’t seek out human hosts, according to health officials, but kicking up sediment at the bottom of lakes may increase the chances of infection from Naegleria fowleri.