The woman contracted a fatal infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba and died eight days after developing symptoms.
A Texas woman died from an infection caused by a brain-eating amoeba days after she cleaned her sinuses using tap water, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention case report.
The woman, an otherwise healthy 71-year-old, developed “severe neurologic symptoms,” including fever, headache and an altered mental status, four days after she filled a nasal irrigation device with tap water from her RV’s water system at a Texas campsite, the CDC report said.
She was treated for primary amebic meningoencephalitis — a brain infection caused by Naegleria fowleri, often referred to as the “brain-eating amoeba.” Despite treatment, the woman experienced seizures and died from the infection eight days after she developed symptoms, the agency said.
I’m seeing many, many comments from people who have never used a neti pot or have questions. There are some basic answers, from a man who has, at times, safely used a neti pot.
You only use a neti pot with distilled water or previously boiled water. I use water fresh off a boil, cooled down just enough to where my nose can tolerate it. You can use that expensive gentle salt or table salt or sea salt, anything is fine.
You guys have no idea how satisfying it is when your head is all stuffed up with snot, blowing with a tissue is impossible…and you cycle some warm saline solution in your sinuses & a massive glob of 3-4 tablespoons of snot effortlessly glides out your other nostril into the sink & you can breathe again. It is a disgusting miracle when you’re sick, it is amazing.
Let’s clarify a few things – always use distilled or previously boiled water, as the brain-eating amoeba is present in most of North America’s waters. It can potentially survive water processing plants, and possibly domestic hot water tanks. The brain-eating amoeba can only survive in warm, moist environments…like your sinuses right next to your brain…it must be forcibly injected into there, so no cannonballs into the lake. No snorting untreated lake water. Normal swimming is okay.
You can use the neti pot too much. I was using it to aggressively clear out my sinuses for a year with limited success, and it turns out I am allergic to a mold or fungus at my workplace. Very frequent use of the neti pot only irritated my nose further, causing it to become inflamed (but not dangerous), and it would never ever cure the root problem: allergies. That was only fixed by pills & anti-histamine spray.
There is no need to be afraid of the neti pot, or the brain-eating amoeba, so long as you use the neti pot responsibly. Correctly.
I use saline I buy at the drug store for something like $1 a liter. No brain amoebas for me!
It’s always been tempting to try a neti pot as my sinuses are always clogged and no amount of trying to blow my nose brings anything out
But stories like the amoeba scare me to hell and back, even if I did everything right it would still scare me.
As a former permastuff allergy sufferer, I can’t recommend enough trying out triamcinolone (nasacort). I had tried nasal sprays in the 90s and early 2000s without any luck. About 5 or so years ago, my allergist recommend I give it a try again as a lot of formulas have come around since then and could work for me now. I couldn’t believe it, no more permastuffed and there’s smells everywhere. Learned that I love the smell of star jasmine flowers.
For me, a puff in each nostril in the morning and another puff as needed when blowing my nose doesn’t suffice (which is rare) has turned this perma-stuffed allergy sufferer into a not-perma-stuffed person.
I had a similar discovery a few years ago and now use Nasacort daily, but I find that all that mucus just goes down my throat instead of hanging around my sinuses like usual. Now it’s a battle between stuffy nose or clearing my throat constantly
So I’m an environmental microbiologist. If it’s any consolation, these incidents are very rare despite people doing similar things frequently. Even if you do snort water that’s home to Naegleria fowleri, infection isn’t common. If you take basic precautions, you really don’t have anything to worry about.
you can buy medical saline from the grocery store.
To use a neti pot you use a saline solution. If you don’t trust the water you got at home (boiled first, naturally, both to sterilize and allow for easier dissolution of the salt), you can just buy a bag of NaCl solution in any pharmacy instead.
Just put the sealed bag into a pot of warm water first to bring it up to room temperature or slightly above. Flushing your sinuses with cold water ain’t fun.
Everything made sense at “Texas”.