Brain Amoebas. Organ Transplants. Brrr.

[n2doc]

by Maryn McKenna September 17, 2010



Nightmare scenario: New disease arises. It’s rare enough that there aren’t many known patients, and so it isn’t well-studied — and because it isn’t well-studied, there aren’t agreed-upon treatments or accurate tests for it, and there isn’t a good understanding of situations where the infected might pose an unusual risk to others.

Situations, for instance, like organ transplants.

The CDC’s weekly bulletin today describes that nightmare scenario come true. Last year, four people received the kidneys, heart and liver of a 4-year-old boy who died in Mississippi of encephalitis that was assumed to be a rare reaction to flu infection. Weeks after the transplant, the two kidney recipients developed neurological symptoms — spasms, seizures, visual disturbances — and were hauled back to hospitals for evaluation. MRIs showed ring-shaped lesions in both their brains. That sent investigators back to re-examine the boy’s death — and revealed that while he did have encephalitis, it wasn’t because of flu.

It was because he was infected with a newly recognized pathogen, Balamuthia mandrillaris, a species of amoeba. It had passed to the four recipients via his organs, and grew in them with an assist from the immune-suppressing drugs they were taking to prevent rejection.

There have been only about 200 human cases of Balamuthia in the world since the infection was first recognized in 1990 (it got its name from its first-ever sighting the year before, in a sick mandrill at the San Diego Wild Animal Park). Treatment is prolonged and complex, an IV cocktail of multiple drugs that can drag on for months and optimally includes a drug, miltefosine, that isn’t even available in the United States except under an emergency plea to the Food and Drug Administration. When the amoeba develops in the brain, treatment is often unsuccessful anyway: Most cases of Balamuthia encephalitis are fatal.



Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/brain-amoebas-organ-transplants-brrr/

[n2doc]

1. kick n/t

[Octafish]

2. Gosh. If most of the tax money wasn't going to the Pentagon's suppliers...

...and Wall Street bondholders, we could invest heavy financial resources in medical R&D.

Who knows? We might be better prepared to handle the unexpected. We might even be able to treat and prevent more diseases, harvest our own vat-grown stem cells (let alone cloned organs), and live better lives.

But, who am I kidding? That costs money and We the People's keepers need to be able to kill kill kill 24/7.

[MilesColtrane]

3. Amoebic infections of all types are likely to increase as global temperature rises.

Here's a story from 2007 of a boy who died after swimming in Lake Havasu in Arizona.


http://phoenix.about.com/od/health/qt/Ameba.htm