Experts urge against panic after death of US teenager from brain-eating amoeba

People at the edge of Kingman Wash, at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Arizona (Julie Jacobson/AP)

The death of a US 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, among people at freshwater lakes, rivers and springs, experts said.

“It gets people’s attention because of the name,” former public health epidemiologist Brian Labus said of the naturally occurring organism, which is officially called Naegleria fowleri but almost always dubbed the brain-eating amoeba.