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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @01:28PM
Garlic is a good antimicrobial. If my nose is starting to have mucus I eat garlic and it usually helps a lot. For evidence of its antimicrobial properties you can look up videos of garlic zone of inhibition tests. It creates zones of inhibition on petri dishes
I noticed once when I was on antibiotics for an infection my sinuses during that time were very clear. I had to take the antibiotic three times a day. Garlic has a similar effect on my sinuses, it helps clear them up, but I don't like to take it three times a day because it makes me smell and too much of it can cause minor heart burns every once in while.
Also make sure you ventilate your room/house every once in a while. I like to keep a window slightly open. It removes all the toxins from the air you breathe and it replenishes the bad bacteria in the air with good bacteria.
On rare occasions, for very bad infections, I sterilize my nose with a mixture of a little bit of H2O2, hypoallergenic baby shampoo, and water. Application is important here.