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  Awards Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Ctr. Boston Medical Center Boston University Brigham and Women's Hospital Broad Institute Cambridge Health Alliance Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Ctr. Children's Hospital Boston Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Grants Harvard University Joslin Diabetes Center Lahey Clinic Mass. General Hospital Mass. Health Law McLean Hospital MIT New England Baptist Hospital Personnel Moves Public Health Research Short White Coat Tufts-New England Medical Center Tufts University UMass Memorial Medical Center University of Massachusetts VA Medical Centers    A Healthy Blog Running A Hospital Nature Network Boston SciBos - Corie Lok's blog Kevin, M.D. Blog, MD Nurse at small Dr. Gwenn Is In Healthy Children blog WBUR's CommonHealth Other Globe Blogs
Elizabeth Cooney is a health reporter for the Worcester Telegram &
Gazette.
Boston Globe Health and Science staff:
Scott Allen Alice Dembner Carey Goldberg Liz Kowalczyk Stephen Smith Colin Nickerson Beth Daley Karen Weintraub, Deputy Health and Science Editor, and Gideon Gil, Health and Science Editor. Short White Coat blogger Ishani Ganguli Short White Coat blogger Jennifer Srygley  Week of:
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« Harvard's Allston science complex approved | Main | Today's Globe: children's health bill veto, surgeon in VA probe, virtual colonoscopy, drug-coated stents » Wednesday, October 3, 2007'Brain-eating amoeba' unlikely here, experts sayBy Elizabeth Cooney, Globe Correspondent Sunday’s "brain-eating amoeba" story has been among boston.com’s most e-mailed stories all week, but that’s about as close as the parasite may come to us, state and national health experts said. The microscopic parasite, which lives in the bottom of warm, freshwater pools, can crawl into the brain via the olfactory nerve, the pathway from the nose to the brain that is crucial for our sense of smell. Once there, it can cause inflammation that destroys brain tissue. Symptoms typically start with a stiff neck, headache and fever, and death usually follows after three to seven days. "This is a heat-loving bug that you really find only in hot springs or in southern tier states," Beach said. "We know we tend to see an increase in cases after an extended heat wave, and that's what we think happened this year." A similar burst occurred in 1980, when eight people died, he said. "It’s a very rare disease," Dr. Alfred DeMaria, the Massachusetts director of communicable disease control, said in an interview. “We’ve never had a case in Massachusetts. We don’t have that kind of environment." People shouldn’t be swimming in the kind of water where this parasite lives, DeMaria said, making it a good idea to stick to clean beaches, salt water and chlorinated pools. "We wouldn’t expect to see it here," DeMaria said. Beach said there has not been an overall increase in the number of cases, despite the spikes that follow heat waves in states in the swath from Florida to California. But as temperatures rise because of global warming, so does concern. "These are extremely tragic deaths," Beach said. "One has to consider with temperatures going up, the organism will compete better and we may see more cases. We want to track this." Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 07:42 PM
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