CDC at Work: On Call 24/7 for Naegleria fowleri Infections, the Brain-eating Ameba

From CDC Connects, CDC’s Employee Intranet (12/17/2015)

Jennifer Cope

Jennifer Cope and her colleagues in the Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch know more about Naegleria fowleri, the free-living ameba that causes PAM, than anyone else in the world.

Every summer as the weather heats up, Jennifer Cope, MD, MPH, gets ready for calls from doctors and health departments across the country. They’re looking for answers about a rare and deadly disease known as PAM (primary amebic meningoencephalitis) and a drug to help treat PAM that is available through CDC and nowhere else in the United States.

Cope and her colleagues in the Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch (WDPB) of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID) know more about Naegleria fowleri, the free-living ameba that causes PAM, than anyone else in the world. And they’re on a mission to make a difference with that knowledge since they serve as frontline resources for physicians and health departments around the country.

Each of these has been associated with a PAM infection in recent years. Water is, of course, what they have in common. It is normal to find Naegleria fowleri in rivers, freshwater lakes, and soil, especially in the southern United States. Naegleria fowleri thrives in warm fresh water up to 115 degrees, so most infections occur as a result of swimming. However, for the first time in the United States, infections have also been linked to use of water from municipal water systems where there is not enough chlorine to disinfect the water.

Here’s the tricky part. You can’t get PAM from ingesting water contaminated with Naegleria fowleri; you can only get it when contaminated water goes up into your nose.

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