"Two people have died after flushing their sinuses using neti pots that may have contained amoeba-contaminated water, causing scientists to look anew at a once rare disease that may be on the rise."
For sheer terror, “flesh-eating bacteria” can’t hold a candle to “brain-eating amoeba.” So it is little wonder that two recent fatalities in Louisiana in people who were killed by the amoeba after they used neti pots to flush their nasal passages with (apparently amoeba-contaminated) water has sinus sufferers in a panic. Until now, the only known cases of infection by the brain-eating parasite Naegleria fowleri have occurred when people swam in warm rivers, lakes, or other bodies of freshwater where the single-celled organism lives. If the two deaths in Louisiana were indeed the result of exposure to drinking water from a chlorinated municipal supply, that is worrisome. “We’re not exactly sure why this tragic situation occurred,” says Jonathan Yoder, a scientist in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of parasitic diseases. “We’re working with authorities in Louisiana to understand the characteristics of the water system that might have allowed this.”
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