In Florida, a man died after washing his nose with tap water at home, contaminated by a microorganism called “Naegleria fowleri”, commonly known as brain-eating amoeba.
Health agency officials in Charlotte, southwest Florida, say there is a correlation between the two events: other cases have been recorded in the United States due to non-compliant water supplies.
In 2018 in Seattle, a woman contracted a similar infection using a nasal irrigator. Naegleria fowleri is a parasite measuring 20 thousandths of a millimeter and has a very simple structure.
It can infect various animals, especially mammals: humans risk contracting it by swimming in rivers or lakes with warm or warm water, but also by washing the nose with infected water. If it entered through the mouth, the parasite could not proliferate: when it passes through the nose, however, it goes up the olfactory nerve, up to the brain.
It is there that, feeding on the brain nervous tissue, rapid multiplication takes place. The disease has a very high mortality rate of 90%: the parasite can cause primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, which affects the central nervous system. Symptoms include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, disorientation, stiff neck, loss of balance, convulsions, hallucinations.
It can lead to death within a week if not diagnosed immediately. Of the 154 people who became infected in the United States between 1962 and 2021, only four survived. In Italy over the years only one case has been detected, discovered – moreover – post mortem.
