Man Infected With Brain-Eating Amoeba After Visiting Iowa Beach
A Missouri man has been confirmed to have a rare life-threatening infection of the brain, which health authorities believe he acquired while swimming at the Lake of Three Fires State Park in Taylor County, Iowa. As a precautionary response, the beach that provides access to the lake will be closed temporarily to swimmers, the Iowa Department of Public Health said Friday.Naegleria fowleri, commonly called a “brain-eating amoeba,” is a microscopic single-celled free-living amoeba that can causes an infection of the brain called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). PAM destroys brain tissue and causes severe brain swelling and death in most cases.“Fortunately, PAM is quite rare,” says William Schaffner, MD, professor of medicine, in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University…