A Las Vegas teenager has died after being infected with a brain-eating amoeba, but experts say the case should prompt caution and not panic, News.ro reports citing The Guardian.

The death of a Las Vegas teenager from a rare brain-eating amoeba should prompt caution, not panic, among people around freshwater lakes, rivers and springs, experts say.

“It gets people’s attention because of the name,” Brian Labus, a former public health epidemiologist, said Friday of the naturally named organism. Naegleria fowleribut is almost always called the “brain-eating amoeba.”

“But this is a very, very rare disease,” he said.

Investigators believe the teenager ended up in the warm waters of Lake Mead, possibly during the weekend of September 30.

The county released the case Wednesday after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the case.

Amoeba infects a person only by entering the nose and migrating to the brain

The Centers for Disease Control has documented only 154 cases of infection and death from the amoeba in the United States since 1962, said Labus, who teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Public Health. Almost half of those cases were in Texas and Florida. Only one was registered in Nevada until this week.

“I wouldn’t say it’s cause for concern,” Labus said. “People should be wise when they are in places where this rare amoeba actually lives. The organism is found in waters whose temperature ranges from 25 degrees to 46 degrees Celsius,” he added.

The Lake Mead National Recreation Area and District, which oversees the lake and the Colorado River, noted that the amoeba infects humans only by entering the nose and migrating to the brain. It is almost always fatal.

“It cannot infect humans if swallowed and is not transmitted from one person to another,” said authorities, who advised people to avoid jumping or diving in warm waters, especially in summer, and to keep their heads above water. in hot springs or other “raw geothermal waters”.

“It’s 97 percent fatal, but 99 percent preventable,” said Dennis Kyle, professor of infectious diseases and cell biology and director of the Center for Tropical Diseases at the University of Georgia.

Read also:

• Texas boy dies after contracting brain-eating amoeba at water park / Authorities find serious violations
• A state of emergency has been declared in Texas after a brain-eating amoeba was found in the water
• A rare case of brain-eating amoeba has been discovered in the US