{"id":158065,"date":"2023-02-15T08:24:54","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T14:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/brain-eating-amoeba-beaten-by-old-european-drug"},"modified":"2023-02-15T08:24:54","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T14:24:54","slug":"brain-eating-amoeba-beaten-by-old-european-drug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/brain-eating-amoeba-beaten-by-old-european-drug","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBrain-eating\u201d amoeba beaten by old European drug"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B-GfKM759p0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A decades-old drug used to treat urinary tract infections (UTIs) appears to have saved the life of a man infected by the \u201cbrain-eating\u201d amoeba \u2014 and his case highlights the tremendous potential of a new type of genetic sequencing technology.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The patient<\/strong>: In 2021, a <a href=\"https:\/\/wwwnc.cdc.gov\/eid\/article\/29\/1\/22-1531_article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">54-year-old man<\/a> was admitted to a Northern California hospital following a seizure. After an MRI revealed a mass in his brain, he was transferred to the UCSF Medical Center, where the mass was biopsied.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the biopsy, doctors suspected that the patient\u2019s brain was being attacked by an amoeba \u2014 a highly dangerous and unusual infection. They sent a sample to the University of Washington, Seattle, where a PCR test identified the pathogen as <em>Balamuthia mandrillaris<\/em> \u2014 a deadly brain-eating amoeba that kills more than 90% of people it infects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A decades-old drug used to treat urinary tract infections (UTIs) appears to have saved the life of a man infected by the \u201cbrain-eating\u201d amoeba \u2014 and his case highlights the tremendous potential of a new type of genetic sequencing technology. The patient: In 2021, a 54-year-old man was admitted to a Northern California hospital following [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}