Woman dies after using non-boiled motorhome tap water for nasal flush: case report
The patient died of a brain amoeba infection 12 days after rinsing her sinuses.
A woman has died of a brain infection after performing nasal irrigation using water taken directly from her motorhome’s tap, US investigators report.
The 71-year-old woman developed severe neurological symptoms — including fever, headache, altered mental status and seizures — four days after using a sinus flush squirt bottle.
Despite medical treatment in Texas for a suspected primary amoebic meningoencephalitis infection, the woman died eight days after symptom onset, according to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
An autopsy confirmed the presence of the amoeba Naegleria fowleri in the woman’s CSF.
