Experts: Lake Mead brain-eating amoeba death among few in US

By KEN RITTER
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Experts say the death of a Las Vegas-area teenager from a rare brain-eating amoeba that investigators think he was exposed to in warm waters at Lake Mead should prompt caution, not panic. Epidemiologists say the disease sounds scary and is almost always fatal, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has counted just 154 cases in the U.S. in 60 years — mostly in Texas, Florida and other states in the South. Dennis Kyle heads a University of Georgia center that studies rare diseases. He calls deaths caused by the amoeba 97% fatal but 99% preventable. He says people can protect themselves by not jumping into water that gets up their nose, or by using nose plugs.