A woman was killed by a rare amoeba who eats the brain for a really stupid reason

Cleansing the nasal cavity is a common method for clearing the sinuses, but it could also be a vector for a deadly amoeba that eats the brain. At least, that's what can happen if you do not follow the instructions carefully, as a new case report says.

The use of a neti pot or another type of irrigation device helps many people to breathe better by washing and moistening their nasal pbadages, but the only thing they do not want to do is to clean them. The fatal experience of a Seattle woman highlights the potentially extreme danger of not using sterile water with these aids. .

"When I operated on this woman, a portion of her brain the size of a golf ball was covered with blood," said neurosurgeon Charles Cobbs of the Swedish Medical Center. The Seattle Times.

"There were these amoebae all over the place eating brain cells, we had no idea what was going on, but when we got the tissue, we saw that it was safe." was an amoeba. "

About a year ago, the woman in her 69s had developed a chronic sinus infection.

As the medications did not relieve her symptoms, her doctor suggested she use a saline irrigation device to clean her sinuses. These devices flush the sinus system with a saline solution that cleanses the nasal pbadages, but as recommended by the guidelines, it is important to use only water that is free from infectious organisms.

This means using purchased distilled or sterile water or boiled and cooled tap water that has boiled for 3 to 5 minutes. Apart from this, the neti pot or other device used must also be sterile, which means scrubbing between uses.

Unfortunately, the 69-year-old woman in this case did not comply with these instructions. Instead of using sterile water with her device, she cleaned her sinuses with filtered tap water, which had not been boiled.

After a month of treatment of this kind, her sinus infection had become a large rash on the bridge of the nose, accompanied by a red and raw skin at the nasal opening.

Despite several visits to her dermatologist, the mystery behind these strange symptoms – initially suspected of being a kind of rosacea – was not resolved, although a sudden deterioration in her condition a year later allowed find answers.

About a year after the onset of nasal rash, the patient has an epileptic seizure, the woman losing knowledge and the left side of her body trembling.

A CT scan revealed what looked like a tumor the size of a small room in the motor cortex on the right side of his brain. A biopsy showed necrosis consistent with such a tumor, but when the patient returned a few days later with new symptoms, further badysis revealed that the lesions were spreading in her brain.

"On the 19th postoperative day, the consultant neuropathologist at Johns Hopkins University suggested the possibility of an amoeba infection," explains the case note.

"A subsequent histopathological evaluation at the second resection revealed obvious signs of amoeba infection and dramatic hemorrhagic necrosis."

Although it is not known for sure how the woman contracted amoeba infection, researchers suspect the body – Balamuthia mandrillaris – entered the woman 's brain with an "inappropriate nasal wash", first entering her blood, before settling into her brain.

There is no doubt that such infections are very rare. In fact, if the hypothesis of the team is correct, it represents the first case of B. mandrillaris Nasal wash brain infection, although another type of amoeba – Naegleria fowleri – has already been reported infiltrating humans this way.

"The pathologist was able to observe it under the microscope and see the characteristic, in this case the amoeba, in the tissue," Cobbs told Q13 FOX.

"This is extremely rare.This amoeba was not even known 20 years ago.There were about 200 cases worldwide."

Unfortunately, once the culprit was identified, it was too late. Despite aggressive anti-amoebic treatment, his condition deteriorated and, a week later, he was dead.

While the scarcity of these types of infections means that we should not panic them too much, researchers are also reminding people that if they are going to use devices like neti pots to clean their sinuses, it is imperative to do it safely, following all directions.

"The reason that one can contract the brain infection through nasal irrigation, as opposed to swallowing tap water or bathing, is that the roof of the nose is the only thing that can be done. one of the only parts of the human body where it directly extends the brain and central nervous system into the outside world, "explained to Ben Bleier otolaryngologist of Harvard Medical School TIME.

"We still think its use is very, very safe, you just have to do it in a clean way."

The results are reported in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.