Teen Dies from Brain-eating Amoeba two days after swimming in Minnesota lake

A brain-eating amoeba caused the fatal infection that killed a 14-year-old boy, 48 hours after swimming in a Minnesota lake.

Add caption

Hunter A. Boutain was taken off life support Thursday morning at Masonic Children's Hospital in Minneapolis, just two days after the teen contracted the deadly primary amebic meningoencephalitis, a pathogen that lurks in fresh warm water and can infect the brain by travelling through the nasal cavity, according to family and health officials.

Boutain was at Lake Minnewaska in Pope County on Tuesday, but hospitalized and unresponsive just hours later.

 

"We are praying for a miracle for this rascal," the teen's uncle, Bryan Boutain, wrote on the blog Caring Bridge Tuesday night.

"A miracle. A miracle. A MIRACLE. No matter how many times I whispered in his ear that I love him and that I wish he would be bothered enough by my buffalo-winged bad breath to punch me in the face...he does not," Boutain wrote. "I mightily will him to do so. He does not. I beg him. He does not. I..., yet, he does not. Why won't he? Come on, Hunter...say something smart to me! Hunter! Hunter? Hunter. Hunt..."

The young Boutain, known as a bright student at Alexandria High School who sometimes wore bow ties, never recovered. Doctors declared him brain dead, according to family.

Add caption

"The Lord didn't want him to stay on earth. As much as I am hurt I know I can't love him as much as GOD," older brother Lee Boutain wrote in a Facebook tribute. "For my little brother will be there waiting for me when I leave this earth."

The Centers for Disease Control and Minnesota Department of Health is investigating the death, which is the third linked to PAM since 2010.

Lake Minnewaska, which spans 8,000 acres and runs up to 32 feet deep, is an ice fishing Mecca. It's also much larger than the lakes where the two previous cases occurred.

"It is not what we think of as typical because the risk is greater when water temperatures are higher and water levels are lower," said Trisha Robinson, waterborne diseases unit supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Health.

Just 35 people have died from PAM in the U.S. since 2005.

The deadly amoeba is common, but can only access the brain through the nose. Diving or jumping into the water seems to pose the greatest risk, according to Dr. Stacene Maroushek, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Hennepin County Medical Center.

"Try to avoid getting water up the nose," she said. "Use nose plugs or at least try not to do diving that pushes water up the nose."