Parasite Blog Brain eating amoeba (Naegleria fowleri) and Humans (Homo sapiens)

Naegleria fowleri is a eukaryotic protist that can be found in soil, air and water on every continent
other than Antarctica. They have a 100% survival rate at a Ph between 2.1 and 8.15 and at all
naturally occurring temperatures above 10C. They enter the human body through the nose and
then enter into the Central nervous system. From here they make their way to the brain and start to
consume brain cells, it is for this reason they are known as Brain eating amoeba! Once the amoeba
get inside the body they can cause primary amoebic meningoencephalitis or PAM, which has a
shocking mortality rate of over 90%. While it is a parasite itself it can also become the host,
numerous smaller parasites have been observed inside the nucleus of N. fowleri, although some of
these were proved to be symbiotic relationships, helping the N. fowleri to grow faster.

Depending on conditions N. fowleri can switch state to stay alive. There are 3 different stages in the
life cycle that can happen any amount of times depending on the environmental conditions. In
unfavourable conditions they take an inactive cyst form. They cannot reproduce and do not eat in
their cyst state. Once they find favourable conditions they transform into their trophozoite stage.
The trophozoite stage is known as the infectious stage because it is during this stage when they feed
and reproduce. During this stage they move around through pseudopodia and reproduce by binary
fission. The last stage is a transient flagellate stage, here they do not feed or reproduce either but
can move around looking for somewhere with better conditions (a host). The flagellate stage occurs
when they are in the presence of water but still without a host. It is during this stage that they infect
humans and once inside they can change into the trophozoite stage. They cannot change to a cyst
from the flagellate stage so if it comes across highly unfavourable conditions during this stage it will
die. The Attached image shows the 3 life stages of N. fowleri.

Primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, or PAM for short, is the name given to the sickness caused by
N. fowleri. It can take anywhere from one to 16 days from being exposed to the parasite until
symptoms to show up, this is known as the incubation period. Typical symptoms of PAM include:
headache, fever, nausea, stiff neck, seizures and coma which usually end in death in most cases.
Through post mortem investigation, it was found that N. fowleri is found in the hypothalamus, base
of the brain, the midbrain and the spinal cord. The majority of PAM cases reported come from
Europe, Australia and the United States but nearly all cases of PAM in developing countries go
undiagnosed. Developing countries are probably where most cases happen because they are
generally quite warm and people there would use lakes and rivers to bathe in. There are only 5
documented cases of people surviving PAM. All of these survivors did so due to different
combinations of drugs. The recommended mixture of medicine (recommended by the US centres of
disease control and prevention) is: deoxycholate amphotericin B intravenously (IV) and intrathecally
(IT), an azole drug such as fluconazole IV or orally (PO), azithromycin IV or PO, rifampin IV or PO,
miltefosine PO, and dexamethasone IV, which doesnt sound too great.

Overall, Naegleria fowleri is a nasty parasite that can infect anyone unfortunate enough to come in
contact with it. Once it reaches the brain it starts to consume brain cells which makes the host
become weaker and weaker and start to change the mental state of the host. Eventually it will
consume enough of the brain to leave the host unable to function when it will then die. The
information for this blog was taken from a scientific paper called Biology and pathogenesis
of Naegleria fowleri written by Ruqaiyyah Siddiqui, Ibne Karim M. Ali, Jennifer R. Cope and Naveed
Ahmed Khan. Thanks for reading!