Emily Chan
Becoming infected with this amoeba is rare, but it’s even more rare to survive the illness if you have been infected with it.
The few who have overcome the disease may owe their lives to miltefosine, the most recent medication that has been recommended for the treatment of PAM.
Even with miltefosine, not all PAM patients survived. According to the CDC, PAM has a fatality rate of over 97 percent.
Miltefosine can also have harmful side effects on the liver and kidneys, so doctors have been looking into alternatives. New drugs and more effective treatments are currently in the works.
For instance, some studies have suggested that cooling down patients’ body temperatures to around 95 degrees Fahrenheit can improve recovery from brain trauma.
A promising medication to use against PAM includes nitroxoline, an antibiotic for treating urinary tract infections in Europe.
It has been successfully used to treat a different brain-eating amoeba. There are also efforts to develop mRNA vaccines against N. fowleri infections.
For now, the best thing doctors can do for their patients is to learn how to recognize the disease faster to stave off as much damage from the amoeba as possible.
