Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior.
On a hot Saturday in San Antonio over 10 years ago, an 8-year-old boy was rushed to the hospital after days of fever, headache, vomiting and sensitivity to light. The child's mother, who lived near the Texas-Mexico border, had taken him to a series of clinics in Mexico, but his condition had worsened. The child was now unconscious and unresponsive to sound, light or other stimuli.
"It's the kitchen sink," Conrad told Live Science."It's a bad disease, and you just hit them with everything you can think of." By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.'A bull in a china shop'N. fowleri thrives in warm fresh water around 80 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer, although it might manage to hang on in cooler temperatures, too, according to the CDC.
PAM kills by massive destruction of brain tissue. The amoeba itself does some of the destruction directly, giving it the"brain-eating" moniker, but much of the brain damage is actually caused by the body's aggressive immune response to an intruder in the control system, Conrad explained. Parasites that evolve to live inside a body usually have ways of tamping down their host's immune response so they don't lose their meal ticket, Conrad said. But because N.
But he was not unscarred. When the boy left the hospital, he could breathe on his own but not do much else. After months of rehabilitation, he regained some of his abilities, but his family still had to help him with basic self-care, Conrad said. Each summer, a handful of new PAM cases pop up around the country, and doctors are continually working to improve their treatment. They're increasingly exploring strategies like cooling patients' body temperature to around 95 F , Conrad said, which some studies suggest might improve recovery from brain trauma.
New alternativesThere are also efforts to find new medications that work against PAM. Some researchers are interested in developing mRNA vaccines against N. fowleri infection, with a 2024 study in the journal Scientific Reports using modeling of the amoeba's surface features to suggest what such a vaccine might look like.
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