Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

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archangle
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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by archangle » Fri Aug 19, 2011 1:56 pm

Slartybartfast wrote:
GrumpyOne wrote:The problem was confined to the house; it wasn't found in city water samples, said Dr. Raoult Ratard, Louisiana's state epidemiologist.


It sounds like that house might have been on a shallow well that became contaminated by surface water. That shouldn't have happened if the house was connected to a municipal water system. Didn't we read recently someone got very sick/(died?) from bacterial contamination of well water that was used for bathing and a humidifier?
It sounds like the organism was growing in the pipes in his house somehow.

City water supplies are not usually treated strongly enough to kill all possible organisms. They monitor it and watch for levels of a number of organisms and adjust the chlorine and other treatments up and down to kill off a sufficient number of each kind of organism to be reasonably safe.

City water isn't necessarily sterile and it's not necessarily chlorinated enough to keep something from growing in the pipes somewhere in your house.

It's a balancing act. More chlorine costs money, makes the water taste bad, and actually poses some risks of its own when the chlorine mixes with other chemicals.

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by OutaSync » Sun Aug 21, 2011 1:52 pm

This child was the grandson of someone I know. Absolutely tragic.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44171292/ ... rd-person/

A nine-year-old Virginia boy has died after swimming in water infected by a bug known as the "brain-eating amoeba," according to reports. The rare infection has killed two other people in the U.S. this summer.

..The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Christian Alexander Strickland, 9, of Henrico County, became infected after he went to a fishing camp in the state.

The child died from meningitis Aug. 5 and Bonnie Strickland, his aunt, told the paper that Naegleria fowleri — or "brain-eating amoeba" as it is sometimes known — was a suspected cause of the illness.

Virginia health department officials confirmed a case of meningitis and an infection by the bug.

"Sadly, we have had a Naegleria infection in Virginia this summer," Dr. Keri Hall, state epidemiologist at the Virginia Department of Health, in a statement, according to the Times-Dispatch.

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archangle
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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by archangle » Sun Aug 21, 2011 3:38 pm

I think there have been 3 identified cases of Naegleria death so far this year. That's about average in the US for a whole year. Only one was neti related.

It's still bad when your loved one is one of the statistics.

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by RandyJ » Sun Aug 21, 2011 6:21 pm

Should water be at the boil for a certain number of seconds or minutes to kill bacteria? I always boil the water for my sinus rinse, but have never paid attention if it boiled for a whole minute or not...

Boiling water is no great hardship, it just takes about 25-27 minutes once off the hob to cool to a comfortable temperature to put in the nose.

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by GrumpyOne » Sun Aug 21, 2011 6:59 pm

Any amount of time boiling should be sufficient to kill just about anything. One minute would be more than enough. I keep my CPAP water in a sealed cup in my refrigerator. I'll refill my reservoir in the morning, and by evening it's at room temperature.
I agree it's tragic what has happened. I swam in creeks, rivers, lakes and gravel pits in my youth. We were never concerned. The biggest fear we had were leeches and gar. The neti pot incident, however isolated, was enough to make me rethink the way I handled the water I was going to inhale up my nose voluntarily.
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archangle
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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by archangle » Sun Aug 21, 2011 7:05 pm

Boiling water is one of the suggestions in some of the news articles.

A few disease organisms can survive boiling. I don't know if Naegleria is one of these organisms. It does tend to grow in hot springs, but it may only grow in the cooler parts of the springs.

Boiling is probably adequate. Only a few organisms can survive it. I did a little searching, but couldn't find a confirmation that boiling kills Naegleria.

Me, I'm probably still going to use regular tap water unless I hear more news about Naegleria around here. I'm breathing tap water droplets all the time when I take a shower anyway.

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by RandyJ » Sun Aug 21, 2011 7:25 pm

archangle wrote:Boiling water is one of the suggestions in some of the news articles.

A few disease organisms can survive boiling. I don't know if Naegleria is one of these organisms. It does tend to grow in hot springs, but it may only grow in the cooler parts of the springs.

Boiling is probably adequate. Only a few organisms can survive it. I did a little searching, but couldn't find a confirmation that boiling kills Naegleria.

It seems that this amoeba is found in waters cooler than 47 degrees Celsius (acc to CDC), so is it logical to extrapolate that water more than twice that hot (boiling = 100 deg C) would kill it? I'm guessing yes...

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by chunkyfrog » Sun Aug 21, 2011 8:38 pm

We distill our own water.
This way we know it wasn't filtered and then called 'distilled'.

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by archangle » Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:30 am

RandyJ wrote:
It seems that this amoeba is found in waters cooler than 47 degrees Celsius (acc to CDC), so is it logical to extrapolate that water more than twice that hot (boiling = 100 deg C) would kill it? I'm guessing yes...
No. Just because it doesn't grow in 47C water doesn't mean it will die in 47C water. It probably won't grow in 0C water either, but that doesn't mean it will die in it. Some organisms will form spores if they don't like the environment and come back to "life" when the environment gets better.

For instance, botulinum bacteria will not reproduce in 100C water, but they turn into spores and go dormant. You can boil certain foods while canning, but botulinum will survive and grow once the jars cool down. This is how people get botulism from home canned foods if they don't prepare them properly. It takes 121C for several minutes to reliably kill botulinum spores.

By the way, 100C is not twice as hot as 50C. Would you say 2C is twice as hot as 1C? How about if you state it in Fahrenheit? Is 35.6 degrees F twice as hot as 33.8F?

Naegleria probably DOES die at 100C. I just haven't seen "sure kill" numbers for Naegleria yet. Since it's an amoeba, and we're used to bacteria or viruses as "germs," our "gut feel" about killing by boiling can't be trusted.

By the way, where did the 47C number come from?

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by Paper_Nanny » Mon Aug 22, 2011 1:20 am

archangle wrote:Me, I'm probably still going to use regular tap water unless I hear more news about Naegleria around here. I'm breathing tap water droplets all the time when I take a shower anyway.
Is breathing droplets enough to cause infection? All the descriptions I have read make it sound like the water has to be going up the nose more forcefully than what would happen from breathing in the droplets.

Not that I have read all that much... And not that I am objectively reading what little I have read... I know what I am reading is being coloured to some extent by my visualisation of these things breaking through my cribiform and burrowing into my olfactory nerve as they migrate toward my brain.

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archangle
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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by archangle » Mon Aug 22, 2011 1:38 am

Paper_Nanny wrote: Is breathing droplets enough to cause infection? All the descriptions I have read make it sound like the water has to be going up the nose more forcefully than what would happen from breathing in the droplets.
Good point. Since there are so few cases, I suspect that there's not a whole lot of evidence to draw conclusions from. It sounds like Naegleria in drinking water is pretty uncommon anyway. Most of the cases refer to getting it from untreated water in lakes and streams.

And just to make it even more unpleasant, apparently, it eats eyeballs too if you get it in your eyes.

Aerosols of contaminated water are one of the really scary things for spreading disease around. Remember the 1976 legionnaire's disease outbreak from a cooling tower?

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by RandyJ » Mon Aug 22, 2011 7:54 am

archangle wrote:
RandyJ wrote:
It seems that this amoeba is found in waters cooler than 47 degrees Celsius (acc to CDC), so is it logical to extrapolate that water more than twice that hot (boiling = 100 deg C) would kill it? I'm guessing yes...
No. Just because it doesn't grow in 47C water doesn't mean it will die in 47C water. It probably won't grow in 0C water either, but that doesn't mean it will die in it. Some organisms will form spores if they don't like the environment and come back to "life" when the environment gets better.

By the way, 100C is not twice as hot as 50C. Would you say 2C is twice as hot as 1C? How about if you state it in Fahrenheit? Is 35.6 degrees F twice as hot as 33.8F?

Naegleria probably DOES die at 100C. I just haven't seen "sure kill" numbers for Naegleria yet. Since it's an amoeba, and we're used to bacteria or viruses as "germs," our "gut feel" about killing by boiling can't be trusted.

By the way, where did the 47C number come from?
Sorry if I made an error... I did say "I'm guessing" not "I'm sure."

I agree that "twice as hot" is misleading, because in Celsius 100 is more than 2 x 47, but in Fahrenheit 212 is not more than 2 x 116.6. I am sure a chemist would say that such expressions ("twice as hot") are meaningless out of context and I shouldn't have used it. It works in cookies, though. If you have 1 cookie and I give you another, you will have 2 cookies (twice as many as before!) So it is twice as hot in Celsius but not in Fahrenheit.

The 47C number comes from the CDC's website article on Naegleria. They are apparently not found in water warmer than that temperature, which as you point out does not mean that a higher temperature will kill them, only that they probably cannot thrive and reproduce in a higher temperature.

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by Paper_Nanny » Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:29 pm

RandyJ wrote:I agree that "twice as hot" is misleading, because in Celsius 100 is more than 2 x 47, but in Fahrenheit 212 is not more than 2 x 116.6. I am sure a chemist would say that such expressions ("twice as hot") are meaningless out of context and I shouldn't have used it. It works in cookies, though. If you have 1 cookie and I give you another, you will have 2 cookies (twice as many as before!)
I think the Kelvin scale would be the temperature equivalent of the Cookie scale, as both are based on a point of absolute zero. Zero cookies is zero cookies. Zero Kelvin is zero thermal motion.

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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by GrumpyOne » Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:43 pm

I love all this techno babble. Kelvin, Celsius, Fahrenheit, Cookie -- some of the greatest scientific minds of our age brought together by a humble one-celled organism. I realize I could take all the precautions on the world, never meet a Naegleria fowleri, and be struck by a meteorite on my 152nd birthday.
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Re: Naegleria fowleri , aka Brain Eating Amoeba

Post by Paper_Nanny » Mon Aug 22, 2011 12:49 pm

archangle wrote:And just to make it even more unpleasant, apparently, it eats eyeballs too if you get it in your eyes.
From http://www.birdandhike.com/Hike/LAME/Go ... gleria.htm

Prior to 1985 amoebae had been isolated from diseased eyes only rarely; cases were associated with trauma to the eye. In 1985-1986, 24 eye cases were reported to CDC; most of these occurred in people wearing contact lenses. Many of these infections resulted from the use of home-made saline solutions for the contact lenses. Some of the lenses had been heat treated and others had been chemically disinfected. The failure of the heat treatment was attributed to faulty equipment, since the amoebae are killed by 65C (149F) for 30 minutes.

I added the bold to that. 65 C = 149 F = 338 K.
archangle wrote:Remember the 1976 legionnaire's disease outbreak from a cooling tower?
I vaguely remember it happening at the time. July 1976-- I was 10 years old, living in a suburb of Pittsburgh PA, ready to start fifth grade, much more concerned about whether my friends would be in the same class as me than in national news and also insulated from the larger world by the lack of access to television.

I do remember my father going on a business trip shortly after that outbreak and me being worried about him contracting and dying from legionairres disease while he was gone. I had enough information to know people at a convention had died and not enough information to know why. So, I figured convention attendance in and of itself put people at risk.

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