South Korea’s Agency for Disease Control by Prevention reported Monday the first death caused by Naegleria fowleri, also known as ‘brain-eating amoeba’.
The deceased is a patient in his 50s of South Korean nationality who died after returning from a four-month stay in Thailand on December 10. He was admitted to a hospital the next day and died on Wednesday, December 21, according to The Korea Herald.
Subsequent genetic tests have confirmed that the pathogen he carried was 99.6 percent similar to that of a meningitis patient from abroad affected by the ‘brain-eating amoeba’.
This is the first known infection detected in South Korea for this disease, which was first reported in Virginia, USA, in 1937.
Naegleria fowleri is a single-celled organism that lives in soil and warm waters such as springs, lakes and rivers around the world. The amoeba enters the body by inhalation, through the nose, and travels to the brain.
Early symptoms are headache, fever, nausea and vomiting, and later on, headache, fever, vomiting and stiff neck. The incubation period is between two and 15 days.
Human-to-human transmission is impossible, although the Agency has recommended not to bathe in the regions and neighborhoods where it has been detected. In any case, the risk of infection is low.
«We recommend avoiding bathing and water recreation activities in areas where cases have been detected,» said the director of the Agency for Disease Control and Prevention of South Korea, Jee Young Mee, in a statement.
In 2018, 381 cases of Naegleria fowleri were counted worldwide, many of them in countries such as India, Thailand, the United States, China and Japan. In the United States, the mortality rate was reported to be 97 percent in 2021 (154 cases).
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
