[5] The combination of host immune responses and secreted amoebal proteases causes massive brain swelling[6] resulting in death in about 95% of those infected.

[1] Infection is generally associated with underlying conditions such as immunodeficiency, diabetes, malignancies, malnutrition, systemic lupus erythematosus, and alcoholism.

Subsequent invasion of the connective tissue and induction of pro-inflammatory responses leads to neuronal damage that can be fatal within days.

[4] A perivascular cuffing with amoebae in necrotic tissue is usual finding in the AIDS and related T-cell immunodeficiency conditions.

[7] A patient who has contracted this illness usually displays subacute symptoms, including altered mental status, headaches, fever, neck stiffness, seizures, and focal neurological signs (such as cranial nerve palsies and coma), all leading to death within one week to several months.

[8] Due to the rarity of this parasite and a lack of knowledge, no good diagnoses or treatments for Acanthamoeba infection are now known.

Acanthamoeba keratitis cases in the past have resolved from a therapy consisting of atropine and some other drugs with no antimicrobial effects.

In the case that the Acanthamoeba is diagnosed correctly, the current treatments, such as amphotericin B, rifampicin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, ketoconazole, fluconazole, sulfadiazine, or albendazole, are only tentatively successful.

When present in the eye, Acanthamoeba strains can cause acanthamoebic keratitis, which may lead to corneal ulcers or even blindness.

The manufacturer recalled the product after the Centers for Disease Control in the United States found that 21 people had possibly received an Acanthamoeba infection after using Complete Moisture Plus in the month prior to diagnosis.

[1] Furthermore, due to the high prevalence of Acanthamoeba in the environment, these amoebae have been proposed to serve as an environmental reservoir for some human pathogens.

Because Acanthamoeba does not differ greatly at the ultrastructural level from a mammalian cell, it is an attractive model for cell-biology studies; it is important in cellular microbiology, environmental biology, physiology, cellular interactions, molecular biology, biochemistry, and evolutionary studies, due to the organisms' versatile roles in the ecosystem and ability to capture prey by phagocytosis, act as vectors and reservoirs for microbial pathogens, and to produce serious human infections.

[18] The recently available Acanthamoeba genome sequence revealed several orthologs of genes employed in meiosis of sexual eukaryotes.

Owing to its ease and economy of cultivation, the Neff strain of A. castellanii, discovered in a pond in Golden Gate Park in the 1960s, has been effectively used as a classic model organism in the field of cell biology.

From just 30 L of simple medium inoculated with A. castellanii, about 1 kg of cells can be obtained after several days of aerated culture at room temperature.

Pioneered in the laboratory of Edward D. Korn at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), many important biological molecules have been discovered and their pathways elucidated using the Acanthamoeba model.