It is noteworthy that a California doctor reported that the drug was effective for patients infected with brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, which had been feared with a fatality rate of 90%.
The brain-eating amoeba is a single-celled free-living amoeba that feeds on amoebas smaller than itself and lives everywhere in the soil or water. It was first discovered in the brain in the late 1980s and confirmed as an amoeba in 1993.
Amoebas enter the body through wounds in the nose and skin and ultimately travel through the bloodstream to the brain, causing symptoms called granulomatous amebic encephalitis. Brain-eating amoeba has the feeling that it eats the brain, but the inflammation itself is caused by our immune response.
It has a long incubation period and may take several years before symptoms such as fever, headache, seizures, and abnormal behavior appear, but once it develops, the fatality rate reaches 90%. However, granulomatous amebic encephalitis is quite rare and only about 200 cases have been reported worldwide so far. However, anyone can get sick, including people with healthy immune systems.
The case introduced this time was recently published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. In August 2021, a 54-year-old man suffered a seizure and was taken to a Northern California hospital. An MRI scan immediately revealed edema and swelling in his left brain, and he was transferred to the UCSF Medical Center after receiving initial treatment. In the initial examination, it was diagnosed that bacteria or fungi were not the cause, and the man was discharged.
However, the doctor, thinking suspiciously, conducted a biological tissue diagnosis by observing the tissue at the lesion site, and after a month from the first examination, the positive reaction finally came out, and the man was immediately re-hospitalized. Long-term combination therapy with antibiotics, the only standard treatment for GAE, was initiated when a new nodal lesion was discovered on MRI. At first, the lesions appeared to be smaller and improved, but the toxicity of the drug was so strong that continued treatment became impossible. Despite trying to find an effective drug combination, the patient’s condition started to deteriorate again. While desperately searching the medical literature, a drug called nitroxoline turned out to be effective.
100 days after the man first visited the hospital, nitroxorin was administered with the approval of his family and the FDA. Immediately after the start of administration, he had kidney problems, but it gradually improved, and after a week, the brain lesions decreased and he was eventually discharged. Nitroxorine is not a new drug, but has been used for a long time as a drug that kills bacteria in the urinary tract.
Since it is not currently on the market in the United States, it is said that this time it was supplied by a Chinese pharmaceutical company. The company is said to be researching the possibility of nitroxorine as a treatment for bladder cancer. Research on new screening technologies is also underway to diagnose these rare cases as soon as possible and administer drugs before symptoms progress. The man suffered from complications several times along the way, but his condition has decreased and he is said to have almost recovered. He says he is still taking several medications, including nitroxorine, but plans to stop prescribing these medications within a year.
USCF says that they cooperated with other doctors to treat two cases of brain-eating amoeba with nitroxorine, and the initial treatment results were good. They hope to persuade the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stock up on the drug on site for emergency use. Related information this placecan be found in