In a tragic incident in Georgia, a 17-year-old girl, Megan Ebenroth, died after contracting a rare brain infection caused by naegleria fowleri, commonly referred to as the brain-eating amoeba. The Georgia Department of Public Health confirmed that the teenager, who was a straight-A student at Thomson High School and had plans to attend the University of Georgia in 2024, was infected while swimming in a freshwater lake or pond. This makes her the sixth person to die from this amoeba in Georgia since 1962.
Megan went swimming on July 11 and began experiencing severe headaches and losing her balance in the days that followed. She was later hospitalized, intubated, and placed in a medically-induced coma. Just 11 days after being exposed to the amoeba, Megan succumbed to the infection. The loss left her family devastated, with her mother expressing disbelief over the tragedy.
Naegleria fowleri is a type of amoeba that infects people when water from bodies like lakes, rivers, and hot springs enters the body through the nose, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It can also occasionally be found in tap water, but infections don’t result from consuming the contaminated water. Despite its presence in the environment, infection remains a rare occurrence, with only 29 Americans contracting naegleria fowleri between 2013 and 2022. Researchers are still unsure why this amoeba infects some swimmers while leaving others unaffected.
The initial symptoms of naegleria fowleri infection include severe frontal headaches, fever, nausea, and vomiting. As the infection progresses, individuals may experience stiff necks, seizures, and hallucinations, ultimately falling into a coma. The infection progresses rapidly once symptoms appear, leading to death within one to five days. Megan’s parents reported that before her death on July 22, she was unable to walk or communicate.
The Georgia Department of Public Health has advised that to reduce the risk of exposure to this deadly amoeba, swimmers should avoid immersing their heads in and jumping into bodies of warm fresh water, particularly hot springs. It also recommends not stirring up the sediment at the bottom of lakes, ponds, and rivers. The department stated that the amoeba is ‘very common’ in the environment and cannot be controlled, and no method currently exists that accurately and reproducibly measures the numbers of amoebae in the water.
