The CDC has released a map that shows where brain-eating amoebas are infecting people in lakes across the U.S.
A few days ago, a Missouri resident who went swimming in the Lake of Three Fires in Taylor County, Iowa, was hospitalized after a microscopic amoeba entered through their nose and started eating away at their brain.
Better known as Naegleria fowleri, the single-celled organism that thrives in warm freshwater, travels up the nose to the brain where it rapidly multiplies and begins feasting on brain tissue. It can infect people when they are swimming or diving, by entering through their nose.
The state health department reported the case was only the second instance in a Missouri resident and the first in 35 years.
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