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http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/blog/2007/10/sundays_brainea.html
'Brain-eating amoeba' unlikely here, experts say
By Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent
Sunday’s "brain-eatingamoeba" story has been among boston.com’s
most e-mailed stories all week, but that’s about as close as the
parasite may come to us, state and national health experts said.
Six people have died this year after an amoeba called Naegleria fowleri
infected them while swimming in Florida, Texas and Arizona. That’s a
spike compared to the 23 deaths from 1995 to 2004, a trend that may
continue with rising temperatures, epidemiologist Michael Beach of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an interview.
The microscopic parasite, which lives in the bottom of warm, freshwater pools, can crawl into the brain via the olfactory nerve, the pathway from the nose to the brain that is crucial for our sense of smell. Once there, it can cause inflammation that destroys brain tissue. Symptoms typically start with a stiff neck, headache and fever, and death usually follows after three to seven days.
"This is a heat-loving bug that you really find only in hot springs
or in southern tier states," Beach said. "We know we tend to see an
increase in cases after an extended heat wave, and that's what we think
happened this year."
A similar burst occurred in 1980, when eight people died, he said.
"It’s a very rare disease," Dr. Alfred DeMaria, the Massachusetts director of communicable disease control, said in an interview. “We’ve never had a case in Massachusetts. We don’t have that kind of environment."
People shouldn’t be swimming in the kind of water where this parasite lives, DeMaria said, making it a good idea to stick to clean beaches, salt water and chlorinated pools.
"We wouldn’t expect to see it here," DeMaria said.
Beach said there has not been an overall increase in the number of cases, despite the spikes that follow heat waves in states in the swath from Florida to California. But as temperatures rise because of global warming, so does concern.
"These are extremely tragic deaths," Beach said. "One has to consider with temperatures going up, the organism will compete better and we may see more cases. We want to track this."