Arizona issues health warning as person falls ill with suspected BRAIN-EATING AMOEBA ‘after swimming in state park’

An Arizonan has come down with a suspected case of Naegleria Fowleri, otherwise known as the brain-eating amoeba.

The state and Mohave County health departments told DailyMail.com that the cause of the illness has not been confirmed and declined to give the person’s sex and current condition.

Only four Americans who have ever been diagnosed with the infection have lived to tell the tale. The amoeba, which lurks in fresh water, typically kills 97 percent of its victims.

If the case is confirmed to be the rare and serious infection, it would be the 30th to be recorded in the US since 2013. The person is believed to have picked it up at a state park.

The Arizona health department sent samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday and expects the results by Friday.

N. fowleri is a brain-eating amoeba that causes the sudden onset of serious symptoms and often leads to brain damage and death

While the raw number of deaths in recent years attributed to the amoeba is low, there have already been and estimated four deaths this year, the most recent being in Texas after the person went swimming in Lake Lyndon B. Johnson. 

Before that was a resident of Georgia, a two-year-old boy in Nevada and a man in Florida all died after contracting the disease.

Dr Eugene Livar, Assistant Director of Public Health Preparedness at the Arizona Department of Health Services, told DailyMail.com: ‘Public health officials from Mohave County and the Arizona Department of Health Services are working together on a suspected case of Naegleria Fowleri.

‘The investigation into possible exposures and exposure locations is ongoing.’

Details about the case are scarce. For instance, the departments have not disclosed the person’s gender, age or whether they are being treated in the hospital or if they have passed away.

Naegleria fowleri infects people when it enters through the nose and travels through the olfactory nerve responsible for sense of smell into the brain, where it causes severe inflammation and damage.

Symptoms include splitting headache, fever, nausea, and vomiting. Death can come about five days after symptom onset. 

Though typically fatal, there have been sporadic stories of Americans overcoming the potentially debilitating infection called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM). 

The damage to brain tissue, primarily to the frontal lobes and areas critical to motor skills, cognitive functions and speech ability, is so severe that people who survive the infection have to relearn to talk and walk. 

Ms Hardig said she was like a ‘brand-new baby’ after the infection and had to relearn everything including how to walk, talk, read and write

Caleb Ziegelbauer, 14, contracted the illness after he went swimming with his family at Port Charlotte Beach on July 1, 2022

Kali Hardig, now 22, and from Arkansas, was only 12 years old when she was struck by Naegleria fowleri, which doctors think she caught at a water park.

They told her it was a ‘death sentence’ and gave her just four days to live, but a decade on she is swimming again and, last November, became a mother for the first time. She only occasionally struggles with blurry vision in her left eye due to scar tissue from the disease.

And 14-year-old Caleb Ziegelbauer, from Florida, is also now a year on from being infected with the microscopic species. 

He is now walking somewhat but the damage done to his brain means he needs to communicate with facial expressions and has to use a wheelchair.