2-year-old Nevada boy dies from brain-eating amoeba after visit to hot spring
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
July 22, 2023, 1:08 AM UTCBy Marlene Lenthang
A 2-year-old boy from Nevada, diedthis week from a Naegleria fowleri infection, also known as a brain-eating amoeba, state health officials and his mother said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Naegleria fowleri to be the cause of the child's illness, the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health said in a news release Thursday.
The boy, fromLincoln County, just north of the Las Vegas area, may have been exposed at Ash Springs, a natural hot spring in the county, it said.
State health officials didn't publicly identify the child or immediately respond to a request for his name.
His mother, Briana Bundy, said her 2-year-old son, Woodrow Turner Bundy, died Wednesday after fighting the infection.
Woodrow fought for 7 days, his mother wrote on the Facebook page Rainbows for Raynie.
"He is my hero and I will forever be grateful to God for giving me the goodest baby boy on earth, and I am grateful to know I will have that boy in heaven someday," Bundy wrote.
Woodrow loved animals, including chickens, rabbits, cows and especially elk, and enjoyed chasing his sisters around the house, according to an obituary.
"Woodrow's life was a testament of how we should all live. He did everything aggressively. He loved hard, sometimes too hard. He found joy and wonder in all of God's creations and beauties. He loved life, and he loved his family with every ounce of his soul," the obituary said.
Naegleria fowleri — a microscopic single-celled living ameba that occurs naturally in the environment — lives in soil and warm freshwater such as lakes, rivers and springs, and can infect people by entering the body through the nose and traveling to the brain, the state officials said.
From there, it can cause a "very serious rare infection of the brain called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM)" which "destroys brain tissue and is almost always fatal," according to the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health statement.
Four out of 157 people infected in the U.S. since 1962 have survived, according to the CDC.
In February, a man in Florida died from the amoeba that he may have contracted after he rinsed his sinuses with tap water, health officials said.
Last year, there were three confirmed cases of Naegleria fowleri that occurred after exposure to freshwater in Iowa, Nebraska and Arizona, according to data from the CDC. Three cases were also reported each year in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Symptoms of aninfection include severe headache, fever, nausea, vomiting and a stiff neck, and can start between 1 to 12 days after exposure. The disease progresses quickly after symptoms start, and patients usually die within 18 days or less.
The infection is most prevalent in the summer months — the United States is amid a monthlong heat wave expected to continue through the weekend — and officials warned against jumping or diving into bodies of warm fresh water.
Danger at every turn.
Haven't even swum in my own lake this year. I love to swim.
Don't even catch the fish I stocked. It's a live and let live thingy.
Dunn's Fish Farm is sending me something to take care of the BG algae.
Good thing I don't much care for eating fish in the first place.
Just wanted a balanced ecosystem when I stocked it.
I have a ⅓ acre pond on my property. Never even consider going into the water because I can see how easily strange shit could grow there. All the elements for emerging life are right there.
Primordial soup in your back yard?
Just about every summer, there's a warning against taking dogs walking near the river here, due to toxic algal blooms. Humans might refrain from drinking river water, but dogs won't.
I joke with guests that if anyone ever loses a limb that they should use my pond to grow it back.
Installed a fountain and a "bubbler" the first year of my lake.
The first time it filled I swam and snorkeled every day.
Bought a row-boat a canoe and a big swan floatie.
Had house parties where the lake was the huge draw.
Wasn't till this year that I got paranoid about swimming in it.
I have a fountain and an aerator and even a waterfall that draws from the pond into a smaller pond and then returns back into the main pond.
The fish are happily oxygenated, but all sorts of other bio stuff are happily growing too.
Contact 'Dunn's Fish Farm' to turn your pond into anything you want.
Water is the universal solvent buddy.
Don't we know it!
If it is a universal solvent what in the world do you keep it in? Doesn't It just dissolve anything you put it in?
So you are giving up something that you enjoy because of a microscopic single cell thing that has rarely infective anyone and can be found in your lawn, garden, swimming pool, or even your tap water?
Will deal with whatever comes my way.
Whether microbes or fascists.
Earned a degree in environmental science from KU
Everything scares me these days.
Oxidization is everything for all forms of life.