Levels of the brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri, which killed an Ohio teen, were unusually high in water samples taken from the U.S. National Whitewater Center and were probably caused by the failure of the water sanitation system, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this week.
All 11 samples from the whitewater area of the park tested positive for the potentially fatal organism, the CDC said. Other samples from the nearby Catawba River were negative, although the amoeba was found in one sample of riverbank sediment.
"Our findings here are significant," said Dr. Jennifer Cope, an infectious disease physician at the CDC. "We saw multiple positive samples at levels we've not previously seen in environmental samples."
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