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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday December 08 2018, @09:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the ewwwwwh dept.

Fatal brain-eating amoeba may have come from woman's neti pot

A Seattle woman rinsed her sinuses with tap water. A year later, she died of a brain-eating amoeba. Her case is reported this week in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.ijid.2018.09.013] [DX].

The 69-year-old, whose name was not given, had a lingering sinus infection. For a month, she tried to get rid of it using a neti pot with tap water instead of using sterile water, as is recommended. Neti pots are used to pour saline into one nostril and out of the other to irrigate the sinuses, usually to fight allergies or infections.

According to the doctors who treated the woman, the non-sterile water that she used it thought to have contained Balamuthia mandrillaris, an amoeba that over the course of weeks to months can cause a very rare and almost always fatal infection in the brain.


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 09 2018, @12:44AM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday December 09 2018, @12:44AM (#771718)

    There once was a popular nasal spray called "Afrin" or somesuch - I knew somebody who lived under a bunch of oak trees he was allergic to and he was literally addicted to the Afrin sprays, unable to quit. Sterile water was 95% as effective, but he had a psychological component involved I think that convinced him he needed whatever the active ingredient was, too. Once he moved away from the oak forest he was able to quit, after a year or two.

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  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday December 09 2018, @01:13AM

    by sjames (2882) on Sunday December 09 2018, @01:13AM (#771730) Journal

    Part was probably psychological, but there is a significant rebound effect [wikipedia.org] to contend with as well.