A person is hospitalized in St. Louis after contracting a rare infection from a deadly waterborne amoeba, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services reported Wednesday.

State health officials can’t say for sure where the patient contracted the amoeba, but said the person had been waterskiing at the Lake of the Ozarks in the days before they became sick.

The amoeba, Naegleria fowerli, is a single-celled organism that lives in hot springs, lakes and other warm freshwater bodies and often proliferates during the hot summer months.

In the rare cases a person contracts the amoeba, it enters through the nasal cavity and works its way to the brain, where it causes deadly swelling called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis. That’s why some people refer to it as a “brain-eating” amoeb

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