South Korea reports its first death from ‘brain-eating amoeba’

Dec. 26 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The South Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency has reported on Monday the first death caused by Naegleria fowleri, also known as ‘brain-eating ambeba’.

The deceased is a patient of about 50 years of South Korean nationality who died after returning on December 10 from a four-month stay in Thailand. He was admitted to a hospital the next day and died on Wednesday, December 21, according to the newspaper ‘The Korea Herald’.

Subsequent genetic tests have confirmed that the pathogen it carried was 99.6 percent similar to that of a foreign meningitis patient affected by the ‘brain-eating amoeba’.

This is the first known infection detected in South Korea by this disease, which was first reported in Virginia, United States, in 1937.

Naegleria fowleri is a single-celled organism that lives on land and in warm waters such as springs, lakes, and rivers throughout the world. The amoeba enters the body by inhalation, through the nose, and travels to the brain.

The first symptoms are headache, fever, nausea and vomiting and later it produces headaches, fever, vomiting and neck stiffness. The incubation period is between two and 15 days.

Contagion between humans is impossible, although the Agency has recommended not bathing in the regions and neighborhoods where it has been detected. In any case, the risk of contagion is low.

“We recommend avoiding bathing and water leisure activities in areas where cases have been detected,” said the director of the South Korean Agency for Disease Control and Prevention, Jee Young Mee, in a statement.

In 2018, 381 cases of Naegleria fowleri were reported worldwide, many of them in countries such as India, Thailand, the United States, China, and Japan. In the United States it has been reported that the mortality rate was 97 percent in 2021 (154 cases).