infectious disease
tsmith | June 12, 2007 One of the most famous stories in all of epidemiology revolves around the very birth of the science, in the midst of a London cholera outbreak in 1854. At the time, the scientific community was divided over the cause of cholera and other diseases. The majority of them accepted the miasma theory, the idea that disease was due to corrupted air ("all smell is disease," noted sanitation commissioner Edwin Chadwick). This idea dates back to antiquity, and increased in popularity in the Victorian era. It's a great example of something that logically made sense, even though it was wrong.…
revere | June 12, 2007An extremely interesting article is slated to appear in the American Journal of Epidemiology later this month. I haven't seen it yet but Nature News carried a short piece about it. It comes from a team of experts in seasonal flu patterns at NIH's Fogarty International Center (FIC).
The notion that flu epidemics start in areas of high population density and spread outwards may not hold true for the tropics, hints a study from Brazil.
In that country, new research reveals, flu starts in the less densely populated north and moves towards cities in the south. The result indicates that climate,…
tsmith | June 11, 2007It's been awhile since I picked on the real science journalists (as opposed to we Daily Show-esque "fake news" sites). I don't mean to get down on them too much; I know that there are many out there who do an incredible job, but then there are also ones who write up articles like this one on how "...women in northern Europe evolved with light hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to stand out from the crowd and lure men away from the far more common brunette."
Ugh.
So especially for you infectious disease types, can you spot a glaring omission in this article: "Meningitis A…
tsmith | June 11, 2007HIV "dissident" David Crowe is like the gift that just keeps on giving. Last year, I mentioned a paper he'd written in the journal Medical Hypotheses, suggesting that influenza serotype H5N1 doesn't exist. Well, it just keeps getting better. Now, it seems he's writing a book on "the infectious myth"--like previous commenter jspreen, he's going to write about how the germ theory is wrong. Read more about it below...
From Crowe's site:
Most people believe that every disease on the following list has an infectious cause:
* HIV/AIDS
* SARS
* West Nile
* Mad Cow, CJD and other…
tsmith | June 5, 2007Time journalist (and newly minted Nieman fellow in global health) Christine Gorman recently gave a talk at the Global Health Council's annual meeting. Christine discussed topics that get a lot of press--such as HIV/AIDS--and others that occasionally bubble up to the surface, such as malaria and non-infectious global health issues like female genital mutilation. However, she also noted stories that are rare or missing in mainstream health journalism--more on those after the jump.
First, she notes a dearth of stories that "cut across lines, across diseases, across silos." Much like the…
tsmith | June 4, 2007 Syphilis is a disease frequently shrouded in many levels of mystery. It appeared suddenly in Europe in the late 1400s as a highly virulent and often fatal disease, a disease that could give Ebola a run for its money when it comes to sheer grotesque-ness. Victims may be covered with pustules from head to toe, diseased flesh peeled from their bodies, and patients may be in agonizing pain for weeks or months prior to death. However, after this inauspicious beginning, syphilis seems to have become less virulent, and instead shifted in presentation to more of the chronic disease that we know…
revere | June 3, 2007What do we know about transmission of tuberculosis on an airplane? Not much, apparently. There is very little literature on it and not a single case of active TB has ever been traced to an airplane contact. On the other hand, it isn't very easy to estimate the risks. The only way you can do it is in cases such as the current one where you know someone with TB got on an airplane and potentially exposed others. Then you would do intensive follow-up of fellow passengers and crew to see if you could find others who might have gotten infected. Now the problems really start.
First, there's the task…
revere | June 1, 2007We know that the burden of mortality of seasonal influenza falls mainly on the older population but also can kill children and infants. In 2004 CDC started the Influenza-Associated Pediatric Mortality Surveillance System, itself part of a larger notifiable disease system. Its aim was to find out more about the pattern of influenza deaths in children. It is now bearing fruit. A recent surprise was the subject of a CDC Health Advisory, its middle level of broadcast health alerts:
From October 1, 2006 through May 7, 2007, 55 deaths from influenza in children have been reported to CDC from 23…
tsmith | May 31, 2007Just popping in quickly after I saw Klearchos' comment on the updated tuberculosis post. He notes on his website that the CDC has released additional travel information about the XDR-TB infected patient, including shorter flights made within Europe in addition to the intercontinental flights. However, Klearchos notes:
...there is a big "hole" in the information provided by the CDC since, nobody has answered yet the question about how he moved from Santorini to Mykonos. CDC doesn't say anything about that in its report!!
There is no direct flight between the two Greek islands so he must have…
tsmith | May 31, 2007Today is the kids' last day of school, and just happens to be an early dismissal as well, so I'll be busy with them and not tied to the computer this morning/afternoon. However, there are tons of good things to read elsewhere.
First, Orac has a long-awaited update on the Tripoli Six: the group of nurses and doctors accused of killing children in Libya by deliberately infecting them with HIV. The science exonerated them, but that didn't change the court outcome, and I've not seen updates until now.
Next, Revere writes about the H7N2 influenza outbreak in Wales, reminding us (as as I've…
tsmith | May 30, 2007I blogged earlier about the Georgia man who globe-trotted while infected with XDR-TB. I wrote that post late Tuesday evening, and since then, a number of other details about his case have come to light--and they're not encouraging. In fact, this serves as a nice example of a convergence of a number of areas I've written about before--obviously, the evolution of antibiotic resistance and the terrible position it leaves us in, the politics and policies of quarantine/isolation (and how they'd be enforced), and the global spread of infectious disease, so I figured this would warrant another…
tsmith | May 30, 2007 I blogged back in March about World TB day, the theme of which was "TB anywhere is TB everywhere." We know that someone can simply hop on a plane halfway across the world, and be practically anywhere else on the globe in the span of about a day--and their bacteria and viruses are just along for the ride. This is particularly disconcerting when it comes to respiratory diseases, where fellow airline passengers may be coughing and sneezing all over you, or touching shared objects without washing their hands. This is also a scenario that's known to have spread SARS, and may spread a future…
tsmith | May 29, 2007 Scanning today's New York Times, I ran across this article on designing for the world's poor, which isn't really an issue I'd spent much time considering previously. From the article:
"A billion customers in the world," Dr. Paul Polak told a crowd of inventors recently, "are waiting for a $2 pair of eyeglasses, a $10 solar lantern and a $100 house."
The world's cleverest designers, said Dr. Polak, a former psychiatrist who now runs an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs, cater to the globe's richest 10 percent, creating items like wine labels, couture and Maseratis.
"We…
revere | May 25, 2007A hundred years ago Sir William Osler described acute pneumonia as "The Captain of the Men of Death," a phrase he remembered from John Bunyan's The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (the actual phrase is "Captain Consumption, with all his men of death"). In 17th century England it was indeed "consumption," an older term for tuberculosis, which deserved the rank in Death's Legion, and the day may come again when it will come out of retirement to lead a new regiment against us. Beginning in the late 1940s tuberculosis began to recede from the consciousness of the industrialized West, and now it is…
tsmith | May 25, 2007A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I reviewed the HIV/AIDS chapter in Tom Bethell's book, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science." I discussed his characterization of AIDS in Africa:
As the chapter title suggests, Bethell claims that AIDS in Africa is a made-up epidemic; AIDS is really due to simple malnutrition and dirty water supplies, rather than a virus. Government officials, scientists, and journalists are either too brainwashed or too scared to speak against the "AIDS orthodoxy." The evil liberals aren't concerned about AIDS because the real concern of the left,…
tsmith | May 24, 2007 Way back in a few editions of Animalcules, several of the submissions mentioned a fungus that was killing frogs. Wednesday at the ASM meeting suggested that there may be a way to protect these amphibians:
First in a petri dish and now on live salamanders, probiotic bacteria seem to repel a deadly fungus being blamed for worldwide amphibian deaths and even extinctions. Though the research is in its early stages, scientists are encouraged by results that could lead the way to helping threatened species like mountain yellow-legged frogs of the Sierra Nevada mountains of southern California…
tsmith | May 23, 2007 Everyone knows about the "butterfly effect": the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could eventually result in the formation of a tornado in Texas by virtue of very small alterations in the initial conditions of a system. Though this description of it is often decried by people who study chaos theory as an inaccurate oversimplification, it's a useful illustration of the tiny perturbations that can have vast effects on a downstream chain of reactions.
When it comes to infectious diseases, climate change may be the beginning, but environmental effects extend much farther…
tsmith | May 22, 2007I haven't had a chance yet to mention Seed's promotion of the Intel Science and Engineering Fair, the cream of the science fair crop. It's so prestigious, in fact, that it attracts young adults from all over the world to share their research. However, one brought more than the judges bargained for, as she also happened to be in the early stages of measles:
A 15-year-old girl from India who was visiting for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair has been hospitalized with measles, and New Mexico health officials say she was likely infectious when she was traveling and while at…
tsmith | May 21, 2007 I had a strange worry as a kid. I was very scared of getting bit by a tick and developing Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF). I know, weird--even for nerdy kids like me, who knows about Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever? How many readers are even familiar with it?
For those who aren't, RMSF is a zoonotic rickettsial disease transmitted by several species of ticks. Though the disease is named after the geographical region where it was first described back in the late 1800s, the bacterium that causes it, Rickettsia rickettsii (an obligate intracellular pathogen), has been found in almost all…
tsmith | May 18, 2007 I think it must be difficult to study infectious disease without having some kind of interest in history. The field is so rich in stories from decades and centuries past, and infectious disease has played an enormous role in shaping our societies today. As with many fields, I believe our understanding of the present can be improved if we view it through the lens of the past--realizing as much as we can the historical influences and legacies that have brought us to where we are today.
I mentioned a few weeks back that, despite its eradication in the natural world, the smallpox virus still…