Missouri swimmer infected with amoeba, likely from Iowa swim

BEDFORD, Iowa — A Missouri resident is hospitalized in intensive care after being infected with a rare brain-eating amoeba that likely happened after swimming in a southeastern Iowa lake, health officials said Friday. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services has shut down the beach at Lake of Three Fires State Park in Taylor County after the person was diagnosed with primary amebic meningoencephalitis, a rare and usually fatal infection caused by the naegleria fowleri ameba. Iowa state health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are testing to confirm the presence of the infection in the lake, which could take several days to complete. “It’s the worst parasite in the world that we know of because it causes such devastating pathology,” said Christopher Rice, a research scientist in the Center for Drug Discovery at the University of Georgia.