It sounds like the plot of a macabre horror movie: In Pakistan, a man died after visiting a swimming pool from a rare infection with the so-called brain-eating amoeba called Naegleria fowleri.
The 30-year-old died in a hospital in metropolitan Lahore, Pakistani media reported. The health minister of the Punjab province confirmed on Thursday an infection with the pathogen Naegleria fowleri.
The man was a bodybuilder, according to research by the newspaper The Express Tribune. He had complained of severe headaches while swimming and had been taken to the emergency room. According to the newspaper, he later died in the clinic.
Especially widespread in the tropics and subtropics
Although infections with the parasite Naegleria fowleri are extremely rare, they are almost always fatal. According to the German Robert Koch Institute, the organism is especially widespread in the subtropics and tropics. It can also spread in poorly disinfected swimming pools.
Pathogen causes fatal encephalitis
The parasite mainly spreads in warm water and can enter a person’s brain when it swims through the nose, along the olfactory nerve. There it can cause primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAME for short), a purulent meningitis, which in most cases leads to coma and eventually death.
Source: Krone
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