Tap Water in Neti Pot Linked to Woman's Death from Brain-Eating Amoeba

The use of tap water in a nasal-flushing Neti pot likely led to a Seattle woman's death from a brain-eating amoeba, doctors write in a case study.

Instead of using sterile water or saline, it's believed the 69-year-old woman used tap water she'd put in a filter-equipped pitcher, CBS News reported.

The amoeba got into her upper nasal cavity and then into her bloodstream, eventually reaching her brain, according to the study in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

This a rare case that serves as a reminder for people to follow the directions when using a Neti pot, and to use only boiled or distilled water, said Dr. Charles Cobbs, a neurosurgeon at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle who treated the woman, CBS News reported.

"She had not been boiling water, using sterile water or using sterile saline. She had been using water that had been put through a filter and maybe it had been sitting there and somehow the amoeba from somewhere else got in there. So that's what we suspect is the source of the infection," Cobbs said. "This is so rare there have only been like 200 cases ever."

Swimming in warm freshwater lakes and rivers is the most common cause of such cases, but there are rare instances where such infections occur after tap water gets into the nose, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This type of infection cannot occur from swallowing water, and cannot pass from person to person, CBS News reported.

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Ebola Spreads to Large City in Congo

The Ebola outbreak in Congo has spread to the major eastern city of Butembo, and there are concerns about vaccine supplies.

The appearance of the deadly disease in the city of more than 1 million adds to the already difficult task of containing the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history, the Associated Press reported.

The number of new cases is rising rapidly in the city's eastern suburbs and outlying, isolated districts, according to the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Health experts wonder if the supply of an experimental Ebola vaccine will be adequate to cope with the outbreak that was declared on Aug. 1, the AP reported.

To date, there have been 423 confirmed cases, including 225 confirmed deaths, Congo's health ministry said Thursday.

So far, more than 41,000 people have been vaccinated. Vaccine maker Merck has a stockpile of 300,000 doses, and preparing them takes months, the AP reported.

"We are extremely concerned about the size of the vaccine stockpile," Dr. Peter Salama, emergencies director, World Health Organization, said in an interview with the STAT media outlet this week.

He said 300,000 doses is not sufficient as Ebola outbreaks in cities become more common, the AP reported.

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