infectious disease
revere | February 26, 2008As I write this I am at 30,000 feet winging my way to Montreal, Canada, where the temperature is below freezing. So what more appropriate topic than microbial hazards of bathing beaches? Maybe it was my foray into the wonderful world of fecal accidents that prompted me to look further into the subject but I found a couple of papers from last year by a groups at Johns Hopkins about the effect of bather density on levels of parasites pathogenic for humans at one particular beach in Maryland, the Hammerman area of Gunpowder Falls State Park in Chase, Maryland in mid to late summer of 2006 (here…
revere | February 21, 2008A notice from ProMed yesterday alerted many of us to a new published report [subscription firewall] about H5N1 influenza detection in an arthropod species in the vicinity of an infected poultry farm. The arthropods were mosquitoes (Culex tritaeniorhynchus) in Thailand. Two years ago a similar report implicated blowflies (Calliphora nigribarbis and Aldrichina grahami) near some infected farms in Kyoto, Japan. Both papers suggested using arthropods near infected farms as surveillance tools. But both, especially the Japanese paper, raised the open question whether arthropods might play a part in…
revere | February 18, 2008Accidents in swimming pools can be serious or fatal (drowning, broken necks) but fortunately they are rare. For pool operators one of the more likely nightmares of daily operation is when someone has "a fecal accident." In other words, someone craps in the swimming pool. CDC has guidelines for chlorinated pools (which covers most public pools; they are guidelines because regulations are on the state, not federal, level). And they just revised them. It makes interesting reading, although I suppose this is an acquired taste. Here are the details, followed by a classic dramatic re-enactment on…
revere | February 17, 2008When my colleagues announced early afternoon on Friday he was headed home because he was sick, I knew the flu had finally arrived on my doorstep. It was already here, of course. The emergency rooms are jammed, clinics have long waits and hospital admissions for flu are up -- way up. The flu situation was the page one column eight story in Saturday's Boston Globe:
The flu virus is rampaging across New England, spawning waves of coughs and fevers, causing patients to flood doctors' offices, and raising questions about the effectiveness of flu shots given to tens of millions of Americans.
During…
tsmith | February 12, 2008Four cases of measles have now been confirmed at a San Diego charter school--the first reported outbreak of measles in school-age kids in that city in 17 years. Unsurprising twist:
None of the children, including the one most recently reported with the disease, has been vaccinated.
New Scienceblogger Drugmonkey already hits the high (or low, such as it may be) points in this case in a much less restrained manner than I'm able to.
tsmith | February 8, 2008The fever hit suddenly in the form of a piercing headache and painful sensitivity to light, like looking into a white sun. At that point, the patient could still hope that it was not yellow fever, maybe just a headache from the heat. But the pain worsened, crippling movement and burning the skin. The fever rose to 104, maybe 105 degrees, and bones felt as though they had been cracked. The kidneys stopped functioning, poisoning the body. Abdominal cramps began in the final days of illness as the patient vomited black blood brought on by internal hemorrhaging. The victim became a palate…
tsmith | February 5, 2008I mentioned previously a clash between religion and public health, where a Liberian immigrant was jailed for importing bushmeat. She argued that infringing upon her religious freedom in this manner was unconstitutional; authorities argued that she couldn't put others at risk because of her religious beliefs. Another clash where religious beliefs are at odds with public health is simmering in the U.K.; more after the jump.
Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their…
tsmith | January 31, 2008You're probably familiar with the Seinfeld episode where George commits yet another social faux pas, getting caught "double-dipping" a tortilla chip. Just in time for your Superbowl festivities, turns out a soon-to-be-published manuscript (described in the New York Times) examined just how many bacteria are actually transferred by "double-dipping." I have more at Correlations, and the Seinfeld clip is after the jump.
[Edited to add: Steve uploaded the poster describing the research here.]
revere | January 30, 2008OK, they're not cities, they are states. Or cities in states. Whatever. But when it comes to flu shots they are quite different. First benighted Mississippi:
The Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) reports 27 laboratory-confirmed influenza cases in counties throughout Mississippi. The presence of influenza was documented by the MSDH Laboratory in the past few weeks.
"We are now in the peak season of influenza, which will last for the next couple of months," said State Health Officer Dr. Ed Thompson. "If you haven't gotten your flu shot, it's time to get it now. It's still not too…
tsmith | January 29, 2008Yesterday I mentioned the controversy over needle exchange programs as an analogy to the objection the administration has to providing heroin anti-OD kits containing Narcan to drug users. In a bit of good timing, the LA Times has an article about a 73-year-old HIV+ lay preacher, of all people, who was on arrested while working a needle exchange program--which remain illegal in his home state, Texas.
revere | January 29, 2008Since the antiviral agent oseltamivir (Tamiflu) has been touted as the global savior should a bird flu pandemic materialize the idea has been haunted by the specter of Tamiflu resistance. What if H5N1 becomes resistant to the drug? Is all lost? Now it is being reported in the media that the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has found that the predominant circulating seasonal flu virus in Europe this year, H1N1, is showing an unexpectedly high rate of Tamiflu resistance (19/148 isolates tested). This is much more than what has been seen in the past and was from patients not…
tsmith | January 28, 2008 An ongoing outbreak of Salmonella associated with turtles has now sickened more than 100 and caused a quarter of that number to be hospitalized:
Cases have been reported in 33 states, but mostly in California, Texas, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Most of the patients have been children.
No one has died in the latest outbreak, which began in August. But some patients have experienced severe symptoms, including acute kidney failure.
The most common symptoms reported to the CDC included bloody diarrhea, abdominal cramping, fever and vomiting. The median age of patients was 7 1/2 .
More after the…
revere | January 28, 2008Everyone knows it's flu season. We see the evidence in birds and people with H5N1. The Indian subcontinent is awash in birds with H5N1. Sometimes here we forget to remind people it is also flu season with the regular circulating subtypes, H1 and H3 and this is shaping up to be a predominantly H1 season in Europe and the US.
In the US:
During week 3 (January 13 - 19, 2008), influenza activity continued to increase in the United States.
Three hundred twenty-nine (11.1%) specimens tested by U.S. World Health Organization (WHO) and National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (…
tsmith | January 25, 2008 A few months back, I blogged about World Rabies Day, noting that this virus is still a huge public health threat in many areas of the world. A few weeks ago, biologist Olivia Judson wrote a post on a potential "coffin for rabies" on her New York Times blog, describing more about the reality of the disease and what we could do to practically wipe out this virus in humans. I have a bit more on it over at Correlations.
Image from http://www.powhatananimalhospital.com/disease/rabid%20dog.jpg
tsmith | January 23, 2008 Though there still may be some lingering doubt about the cause of the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of plague, the pathogen behind the outbreaks that have taken place in the last 150 years or so is much less ambiguous.
While Koch and Pasteur ushered in the golden age of microbiology, an outbreak of plague began in China and spread from there. In 1894, while plague was raging in Hong Kong, the Pasteur Institute sent Alexandre Yersin, a physician who had trained with both Pasteur and Koch, to investigate. Yersin was able to access material from a corpse, and inoculated material he…
tsmith | January 18, 2008 In parts one and two of the "What caused the Black Plague?" series, I discussed objections that had been raised to the conclusion that the bacterium Yersinia pestis was the cause of this pandemic, and the weaknesses with those criticisms. In today's installation, I'll discuss actual molecular evidence that Y. pestis indeed caused this--and does this research shut the door on alternative hypotheses? More after the jump...
Much of the evidence for or against hypotheses supporting any pathogen as a cause of an ancient disease are based on symptoms and historical records. While we can…
tsmith | January 17, 2008 Yesterday I introduced criticisms that have been raised against Y. pestis causation of the Black Death and subsequent plague outbreaks. Today I'll discuss what I see as weaknesses in these criticisms, after the jump.
Selective quoting and interpretation of evidence
First and foremost, a big issue I have with the claims by Duncan and Scott are that they are rather selective in what evidence they choose. For example, they selected several quotes from medieval manuscripts and diaries that suggest that people at the time "knew" it was directly contagious from person to person, and…
tsmith | January 16, 2008 Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has taken up residence in sport teams, prisons, schools, the military, and even swine. A new article in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that, at least in Boston and San Francisco, it's also causing a lot of infections in men who have sex with men; more after the jump.
To examine this, the authors looked at MRSA infections from a variety of health care settings: medical centers, community health clinics, HIV clinics, and emergency rooms. These were examined in separate analyses. For example, for the medical centers they looked at…
tsmith | January 16, 2008 As I noted last week, Shelley mentioned a topic that's been brought up here a few times in the comments section: alternative theories for causes of the Black Plague (the devastating plague that ravaged Europe beginning in ~1347 and eventually killed more than a third of the population). Though the bacterium Yersinia pestis is almost universally accepted as the causative organism, like many areas of science, there are a few individuals who disagree with the consensus. To this end, several alternative etiologies for Black Plague have been put forth, and shortcomings with the mainstream Y.…
tsmith | January 16, 2008Did Yersinia pestis really cause Black Plague? Part 1: Objections to Y. pestis causation
Did Yersinia pestis really cause Black Plague? Part 2: Examination of the criticisms
Did Yersinia pestis really cause Black Plague? Part 3: Paleomicrobiology and the detection of Y. pestis in corpses
Did Yersinia pestis really cause Black Plague? Part 4: Plague in modern times.