Pestilence

As they scrambled recently to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds around the country, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention successfully used a new tool for the first time — the shopper cards that millions of Americans swipe every time they buy groceries.

With permission from the patients, investigators followed the trail of grocery purchases to a Rhode Island company that makes salami, then zeroed in on the pepper used to season the meat.

Never before had the CDC successfully mined the mountain of data that supermarket chains compile.

“It was really exciting. It was a break in the investigation for sure,” CDC epidemiologist Casey Barton Behravesh said.

At least 245 people in 44 states have been sickened in the outbreak. That includes 30 in California, 19 in Illinois, 18 in New York and 17 in Washington state.

The victims included Raymond Cirimele, a 55-year-old Chicago man. He said no one asked for his shopper-card data, but he would have provided it if someone had.

“I don’t have any secrets, so I’m not worried about it,” he said. “It’s kind of like the whole airport security and all that. I’d rather fly on a safe plane.”

…

Some privacy advocates, though, are troubled.

Longtime shopper-card critic Katherine Albrecht, director of a group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, said she worries that the practice could lead to a switch from a voluntary system to mandatory use of such cards.

“That sends chills down my spine,” she said.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

One in four U.S. parents believes that some vaccines cause autism in healthy children, but even many of those worried about vaccine risks still think their children should be vaccinated.

Most parents continue to follow the advice of their children’s doctors, according to a study based on a University of Michigan survey of 1,552 parents.

“Nine out of 10 parents believe that vaccination is a good way to prevent diseases for their children,” said lead author Dr. Gary Freed of the University of Michigan. “Luckily their concerns don’t outweigh their decision to get vaccines. …”

Source/Full Story: StarTribune.com

The French health ministry issued a warning on Tuesday after eight people died and seven fell sick in two European countries from using heroin contaminated by anthrax.

“Since December 6, there have been 15 confirmed cases of anthrax among heroin users, 14 in Scotland and one in Germany,” the ministry’s General Directorate for Health (DGS) said in a statement.

“Eight people died,” it said. “The likeliest source is heroin contaminated by anthrax spores.”

Most of the casualties had injected the heroin, but others also inhaled it or smoked it.

Anthrax is a potentially lethal bacterium that exists naturally in the soil and can also occur among cattle. It is also, more notoriously, a potential bio-terror weapon.

The ministry said the contaminated drug may also be circulating in France and other European countries.

“There is no outward sign or colour enabling the user to tell whether the heroin has been contaminated by anthrax, and contaminated heroin dissolves or is used in the same way as uncontaminated heroin,” it said.

Source/Full Story: AFP

Indeed, be not complacent in this regard, but continue onward with diligence and patience. The vaccine I wouldn’t touch with a 10 meter cattle prod, but the tactic of separation or “social distancing” is still, IMHO, the best method for decreasing the risk of infection.  And get some Sambucol, it really works well.

H1N1 cases have continued to drop since December and into the first weeks of 2010, but health officials say now is not the time to assume the worst is over.

“We want and need to avoid complacency,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, a director with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said last week. “Having as many people vaccinated as possible is our best course of action, even if we can’t read the tea leaves of the future.”

Source/Full Story: The SouthtownStar

Another new swine flu virus has made the leap to humans, though U.S. officials say it seems almost certain the virus hit a dead end.

The Centers for Disease Control reported Friday that a child from Iowa became infected with a new swine flu virus in September, though the case didn’t come to light until November.

The unnamed boy didn’t need to be hospitalized and recovered fully from the illness.

Testing later showed he’d been infected with a swine influenza virus of the H3N2 subtype, different both from the pandemic H1N1 virus and from the seasonal H3N2 viruses that have been circulating in people for decades.
…
It isn’t clear how the boy became infected with the virus. He had no known contact with pigs, an eerie echo of the emergence last spring of the pandemic H1N1 virus. H1N1 was first spotted in two children from California who had had no contact with pigs or with each other.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! Canada News

Rossouw is on the front lines of a new battle in the fight against HIV: The drugs that once worked so well are starting not to work. And now the resistance is showing up in sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the world’s 33 million HIV cases.

Ten years ago, between 1 percent and 5 percent of HIV patients worldwide had drug-resistant strains. Now, between 5 percent and 30 percent of new patients are already resistant to the drugs. In Europe, it’s 10 percent; in the U.S., 15 percent.

Source/Full Story: msnbc.com

The Supreme Council of Health has scotched rumours about the spread of a new pandemic known as Q-Fever. Q-Fever is a known infectious disease but it currently does not cause any concern worldwide, the SCHSCH said in a statement issued yesterday.

“Recently some news has been circulating about the spread of a new pandemic known as Q-Fever. The SCHSCH would like to inform the public that the disease is currently restricted to the Netherlands. Therefore it is not a disease that causes any concern right now,” said the statement.

Q-Fever is not a new disease and it was reported before in all continents. In 2009 around 2300 people around the world were infected with Q-Fever with 6 fatalities, added the statement.

The disease usually infects veterinarians, meat workers, dairy workers and farmers. The disease is caused by a species of bacteria known as Coxilla burnetii which comes out of cattle, sheep, goats cats, dogs and some wild animals.
Direct transfer of the disease from a human being to another is rare; however clothes of an infected person may transmit the disease. Symptoms are shown in high fever, severe headache, malaise, myalgia, confusion, sore throat, chills, sweat, non-productive cough, nausea, vomiting and stomach and chest pain.

Antibiotic treatment is quite effective, namely Doxycyclin. This treatment is most effective during the first three days of the illness. After full recovery the person may gain permanent immunity against the disease in the future.
Q-Fever outbreaks occur mainly due to occupational exposure involving veterinarians, meat processing plant workers, sheep and dairy workers, livestock farmers and researchers at facilities housing sheep.

Source/Full Story: meattradenewsdaily.co.uk

Biological warfare

Q fever has been described as a possible biological weapon.[18]

The United States investigated Q fever as a potential biological warfare agent in the 1950s with eventual standardization as agent OU. At Fort Detrick and Dugway Proving Ground human trials were conducted on Whitecoat volunteers to determine the median infective dose (18 MICLD50/person i.h.) and course of infection. As a standardized biological it was manufactured in large quantities at Pine Bluff Arsenal, with 5,098 gallons in the arsenal in bulk at the time of demilitarization in 1970.

Q fever is a category “B” agent.[19] It can be contagious and is very stable in aerosols in a wide range of temperatures. Q fever microorganisms may survive on surfaces up to 60 days.

Source:  Q fever – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Significance for Bioterrorism

Coxiella burnetii is a highly infectious agent that is rather resistant to heat and drying. It can become airborne and inhaled by humans. A single C. burnetii organism may cause disease in a susceptible person. This agent could be developed for use in biological warfare and is considered a potential terrorist threat.

Source: Q fever caused by Coxiella burnetii

I’m strongly tempted to infer causality from sentence two rather than sentence four.

Twenty-two people, mainly children below the age of 5, have died of measles in Zimbabwe, the country’s state media reported.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said two weeks ago it was “deeply frustrated” by the measles outbreak, which came after it sponsored a vaccination program in the African nation.

WHO’s head in Zimbabwe, Dr. Custodia Mandlhate, told journalists in Harare the outbreak has totaled more than 340 suspected cases this year, and “this is not acceptable.” She said the outbreak came about “mainly because of people who have denied their children vaccination.”

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

Two African drums stored at the United Campus Ministry in Durham have tested positive for anthrax, the state confirmed yesterday as it continues to investigate the nation’s first known case of gastrointestinal anthrax.

The young woman with the disease, who attended a drum circle at the center, remains in critical condition, state Public Health Director Jose Montero said.

The state ordered the ministry, which serves but is not part of the University of New Hampshire, closed for further testing. As many as 30 drums are stored at the 15 Mill Road building.

Montero continues to ask drum owners who attended the drum circle events since October to call his office for possible drum tests. The state lab has sent some samples, including DNA samples, for further testing at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Source/Full Story: unionleader.com

It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away.

Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood.

I’m dying, he told himself, “because when you cough blood, it’s something really bad.”

It was really bad, and not just for him.

Doctors say Juarez’s incessant hack was a sign of what they have both dreaded and expected for years — this country’s first case of a contagious, aggressive, especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis. The Associated Press learned of his case, which until now has not been made public, as part of a six-month look at the soaring global challenge of drug resistance.

Juarez’s strain — so-called extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB — has never before been seen in the U.S., according to Dr. David Ashkin, one of the nation’s leading experts on tuberculosis. XXDR tuberculosis is so rare that only a handful of other people in the world are thought to have had it.

“He is really the future,” Ashkin said. “This is the new class that people are not really talking too much about. These are the ones we really fear because I’m not sure how we treat them.”

Forty years ago, the world thought it had conquered TB and any number of other diseases through the new wonder drugs: Antibiotics. U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart announced it was “time to close the book on infectious diseases and declare the war against pestilence won.”

Today, all the leading killer infectious diseases on the planet — TB, malaria and HIV among them — are mutating at an alarming rate, hitchhiking their way in and out of countries. The reason: Overuse and misuse of the very drugs that were supposed to save us.

Just as the drugs were a manmade solution to dangerous illness, the problem with them is also manmade. It is fueled worldwide by everything from counterfeit drugmakers to the unintended consequences of giving drugs to the poor without properly monitoring their treatment. Here’s what the AP found:

— In Cambodia, scientists have confirmed the emergence of a new drug-resistant form of malaria, threatening the only treatment left to fight a disease that already kills 1 million people a year.

— In Africa, new and harder to treat strains of HIV are being detected in about 5 percent of new patients. HIV drug resistance rates have shot up to as high as 30 percent worldwide.

— In the U.S., drug-resistant infections killed more than 65,000 people last year — more than prostate and breast cancer combined. More than 19,000 people died from a staph infection alone that has been eliminated in Norway, where antibiotics are stringently limited.

Source/Full Story: ABC News

About 800,000 doses of swine flu vaccine for young children were recalled in the United States on Tuesday when the manufacturer discovered that the vaccine wasn’t as potent as it should be.

Most of the doses – some of which were received in the Bay Area – already have been given to children, but the recalled vaccine poses no health risks and children who received the shots do not need to be revaccinated, public health officials said.

The state received about 47,800 doses of the recalled vaccine. At least two Bay Area counties had some of the vaccine – San Francisco received about 9,000 doses and Santa Clara County received about 900 doses. The San Francisco Public Health Department will send back 500 unused doses of the recalled vaccine, but the rest of it probably has been used.

“We suspect there’s no real implication,” said Dr. Susan Fernyak, director of communicable disease control and prevention at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “Most likely children who already received the vaccine are going to have an adequate immune response. We’re going to accept they got proper immunity from it.”

Source/Full Story: Kids given recalled swine flu shot not at risk

Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.’s business practices reveal how the world’s biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Source/Full Story: ajc.com

In the rare cases when the H1N1 virus kills, scientists have found, it penetrates deep into the lungs, creating widespread damage — a pattern similar to what killed millions during previous flu pandemics in 1918 and 1957.

The New York Office of Chief Medical Examiner examined medical records, autopsy reports and microscopic slides of 34 people with H1N1 who died between May 15 and July 9, 2009, during the early days of the pandemic.

The report found that among those deaths, inflammation and damage in the lungs extended all the way to the alveoli, tiny sacs at the farthest end of the lungs’ airways.

“Generally, flu stays in the upper airways,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the national Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “What this shows is clearly this virus has capability of infecting and causing inflammation and destruction of cells from the trachea, all the way down into smaller cells of the lungs.

“The cells of the lung get directly attacked by the virus,” said Fauci.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com
Technorati Tags: H1N1

Hayli Murphy hears her mother’s cell phone ring, and she bounces off the couch to get it. Watching her run around, it’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, the 9-year-old was heavily sedated in a pediatric intensive care unit, a ventilator doing the job her lungs — ravaged by H1N1 flu — could no longer do.

“She was right there. She was at death’s door,” remembered her mother, Julie Murphy.

Hayli spent 43 days in the intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida.

Looking back at her daughter’s illness, one of the things that strikes her mother is that in the days before Hayli was admitted to the hospital, a test showed that she did not have the flu — twice.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline says it has advised medical staff in Canada to not use one batch of swine flu vaccine for fear it may trigger life-threatening allergies.

GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman Gwenan White said Tuesday the company issued the advice after reports that one batch of the swine flu vaccine might have caused more allergic reactions than normal.

She says the affected batch contains 172,000 doses of the vaccine. She declined to say how many doses had been administered before the advice to stop using them was given.

White says GlaxoSmithKline wrote to Canadian healthcare professionals advising them to stop using the batch on Nov. 18. She says a total of 7.5 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed in Canada.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com