The same brain eating amoeba that was found in St. Bernard and DeSoto Parishes last year was found in the drinking water of St. John the Baptist Parish.

More than twelve and a half thousand people are at risk. A water sample was taken two weeks ago by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. The sample tested positive for Naegleria fowleri, which is the frightening brain eating amoeba.

There are no known current cases.

While this amoeba sounds terrifying (and it is if it infects someone) it is apparently VERY hard to become infected.

This next bit is from Reddit. While anyone can claim to be something on the internet, this guy is certainly convincing if not the real deal. So, read with caution, but here's what he had to say on the subject of this particular amoeba.

Microbiologist here! (not unidan)

Naegleria fowleri is a primadonna of the microbe world because it can produce headlines like this, but the media is universally terrible at covering science and medicine so it gets called a bacteria...anyway!

This little guy is fascinating. It's a single-celled animal with two forms it can switch between: the standard amoeba model, which extends little "arms" to drag itself around the muddy bottoms of warm (stagnant) freshwater ponds/lakes, and a free-swimming form that it uses in case it gets kicked up into the water, to swim back down to the bottom. In 99+% of cases, it is completely harmless.

BUT, and this is a big but, if it somehow gets way, way up inside someone's nose, where the olfactory bulb and nerve lie, it gets mean. It tracks its way up the nerve and into your central nervous system, where it starts attacking everything. Your brain is very isolated from the rest of your body (blood-brain barrier, very interesting topic) so your immune system can't fight back. Through any other route, you're perfectly safe from this amoeba, since it's a free-living organism that's an opportunistic pathogen, not an intentional killer and elsewhere in your body your immune system and other natural defenses can handle it. Because water doesn't just end up wayyy up somebody's nose like that. The "typical" case is somebody who was water skiing, or tubing, or something like that, fell in and had water violently forced up their nose.

The good news is that since this has gotten a lot of media attention as of late, doctors are more alert to it and there are survivors now. Back when I first learned about it in parasitology, it was invariably fatal and only diagnosed at autopsy. I'll also point out that these are incredibly rare infections, with a handful of cases per year, even though it is pretty horrifying.

Maybe that'll put your mind at some ease? Still pretty scary though!

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