What they discovered, swimming in the boy's cerebrospinal fluid, was an organism that left little room for hope: Naegleria fowleri, more popularly known as a 'brain-eating amoeba.'
Conrad had recently read that a new drug option, miltefosine, had been approved as an experimental treatment for N. fowleri infections. 'It's the kitchen sink,' Conrad told Live Science. 'It's a bad disease, and you just hit them with everything you can think of.'
The child's prognosis was grim. Most people who contract an infection with N. fowleri die about five days after symptoms start. According to the CDC, there were 157 confirmed human cases of N. fowleri infection in the U.S. between 1962 and 2022. Four survived.
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