outbreak
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 17, 2007I wrote several posts last year on the mumps outbreak here in Iowa. We didn't get hit with mumps this year, but there has been an ongoing outbreak in Canada, primarily in Nova Scotia. So how do I fit into this?
Most recently, mumps has been diagnosed in Toronto:
Canada's ongoing mumps outbreak has hit the country's biggest city. And Toronto's public health officials expect the current case count of three infections to climb before the outbreak subsides.
"I think we may see more cases," Dr. Barbara Yaffe, director of communicable disease control for Toronto Public Health, said in an…
tsmith | May 8, 2007 Smallpox is, without a doubt, the biggest success story in all of vaccination. The practice of variolation, or the purposeful inoculation of naïve individuals with material from scabs of smallpox victims, was practiced for years prior to Edward Jenner's substitution of cowpox for the smallpox (Variola) virus. The vaccinia virus, thought to be a derivative of cowpox, has been used in the 20th century in smallpox vaccination campaigns. Vaccina elicits antibodies that protect from smallpox infection, yet typically causes an asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic infection. This…
tsmith | May 3, 2007Over at Deep Sea News, Craig has a heartbreaking story about the death of his dog a year ago, and it's possible connection to the current pet food recall. I admittedly haven't been paying very close attention to all the updates on this. I have two small dogs of my own, a 10-year-old chihuahua and a 8-month-old Boston terrier mix, and they both get boring dry food that hadn't been implicated in the recall, so I tuned out a bit after assuming their food was safe. However, Craig's post noted that this melamine spiking has been going on for as long as 15 years, and the American Veterinary…
tsmith | February 9, 2007What's killing honey bees?
Something is wiping out honey bees across North America and a team of researchers is rushing to find out what it is.
What's being called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has now been seen in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and way out in California. Some bee keepers have lost up to 80 percent of their colonies to the mysterious disorder.
Now, I'm admittedly not much of a bee fan. Several of my relatives are highly allergic, and I've only been stung once and hope I'll be fine if it happens again, but they do kind of make me nervous when I see them…
tsmith | January 24, 2007I've previously mentioned a bacterial pathogen called Acinetobacter baumannii (a bit more information here), and Mike has discussed it rather frequently. A. baumannii is ordinarilly a commensal bacterium--one that may live on the skin of healthy people for many years without ever causing disease. It becomes a problem when one is immunocompromised in some manner, and unable to keep growth of the bacterium in check. Once this happens, it's difficult to reverse, as the bacterium brings new meaning to the term "antibiotic resistant." As Mike blogged previously, a genomic analysis revealed…
tsmith | January 23, 2007 As I described previously in this post, war and disease are inextricably intertwined:
War and its concomitant devastation and social upheaval leaves its victims at an increased risk of disease transmission to begin with due to poor sanitation, collapse of public health and medical facilities and support personnel, crowding in refugee camps, breaks in supply chains of food, medicine, and other necessary items, malnutrition and depression, and other factors.
This social upheaval frequently lasts much longer than the actual fighting. Additionally, in some cases where areas have been…
tsmith | January 11, 2007In yesterday's post regarding the current outbreak of Rift Valley Fever in Kenya, I noted:
...while there's little people in the area can do about periodic flooding, scientists are actively examining the relationship between weather and RVF outbreaks. This hopefully will prove useful to predict--and potentially ward off--future disease outbreaks via animal vaccination.
Little did I know that this outbreak had already been predicted by scientists working in this area--back in September. More after the jump...
The deaths from Rift Valley fever could have been avoided if Kenya had heeded a…
tsmith | January 10, 2007 When it comes to hemorrhagic fevers, Ebola and Marburg tend to get the lions' share of the press. Both are highly fatal, both can cause people to die in excruciating ways, and both have come to represent somewhat our fear of and fascination with emerging exotic diseases. However, as I've pointed out previously, as far as actual fatalities--or even illnesses go--both viruses are small potatoes. Other viruses that can also have hemorrhagic manifestations--including dengue and yellow fever--are much more common. One of these other viruses that frequently causes hemorrhagic fever is Rift…
tsmith | December 19, 2006 Libya to execute HIV medics
(Previous posts on the topic)
A court convicted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor Tuesday of deliberately infecting 400 children with HIV and sentenced them to death, despite scientific evidence the youngsters had the virus before the medical workers came to Libya.
The United States and Europe reacted with outrage to the verdict, which prolongs a case that has hurt Libya's ties to the West. The six co-defendants have already served seven years in jail.
The sentence brought cheers in Libya, where there is widespread public anger over the infections.…
tsmith | December 14, 2006Today's New England Journal of Medicine has an article (free access) with more information on the Tripoli Six, who are still awaiting their December 19th verdict.
tsmith | November 16, 2006 I was just lecturing yesterday on streptococci, and discussing how the diseases caused by the group A streptococcus (Streptococcus pyogenes). This is the bacterium that causes diseases as varied as "strep throat," streptococcal toxic shock syndrome, and necrotizing fasciitis (aka the "flesh-eating disease.") It's also caused historical epidemics of scarlet fever, a major scourge in many countries from the mid-1800s or so until around the turn of the century, when it started to wane for no apparent reason. (The worry over this illness was captured in Margery Williams' 1923 book, "The…
tsmith | October 6, 2006Toddler's death blamed on E. coli, officials say
Heartbreaking.
As federal agents launched a criminal investigation into two produce companies involved in the contaminated spinach outbreak, Idaho health officials confirmed the death of a 2-year-old boy Sept. 20 was caused by tainted spinach.
Kyle Allgood was the second confirmed death in the E. coli outbreak, which also killed a Wisconsin woman.
The boy, who would have turned 3 in December, died in Salt Lake City after developing a type of kidney failure caused by E. coli. Health officials had to wait for the results of genetic testing on the…
tsmith | September 29, 2006Nina Plank, the author of the NY Times article I commented on in this post, stopped by to comment. Rather than just having this lost in the comments to a week-old post, I wanted to take a moment and quickly address two of her points (with potentially a follow-up post next week when I have a bit more free time).
First, to Nina, thanks for stopping by. I'll just say that I very much disagree with your stance on raw milk and dairy. Indeed, contamination can also happen after pasteurization and nothing replaces vigilance, but having seemingly healthy cows is no guarantee of healthy milk.…
tsmith | September 26, 2006I was travelling over the weekend and I'm incredibly busy up through Wednesday, so new material from me will have to wait until later in the week. In the meantime, I'll point you to a stellar post I wanted to highlight last week, from Revere on H5N1 and the evolution ov virulence, and another excellent one from Mike regarding the importance of surveillance when it comes to detecting and containing outbreaks (such as the recent O157 outbreak). He also describes a timeline for how long many of the common procedures take; quite a bit different from what you get watching CSI or similar shows…
tsmith | September 21, 2006 That's certainly the claim in a new New York Times editorial (via The Frontal Cortex). The author, Nina Planck (author of Real Foods: What to Eat and Why), claims that it's as easy as just feeding cattle grass, and poof!--E. coli O157 will vanish.
More on this and why organic farming won't necessarily stop such outbreaks after the jump.
Planck writes:
Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? It's not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new -- that is, recent in the history of…
tsmith | September 18, 2006And who said spinach was boring?
If the ongoing E. coli outbreak due to spinach has done one thing, it's highlight the mystery that revolves around Salinas, California:
The sunny Salinas Valley holds a dark mystery: Why, in the past decade, have nine Escherichia coli outbreaks been linked to produce grown here?
It's still unknown why this fertile land has been hit by what an FDA official calls "significant" crop contamination.
Throughout the picturesque terrain here, questions swirl.
Has cattle waste contaminated irrigation water? Does contaminated soil blow in the wind? Do birds feeding on…
tsmith | September 15, 2006I mentioned Mike also wrote on the E. coli outbreak. Additionally, Carl, who's working on an upcoming book on E. coli (woo hoo!) also has more, including a bit on the evolution of E. coli O157:H7 (while Mike talks about E. coli in general and the bad rap it sometimes gets). Check 'em out.
tsmith | September 15, 2006 E. coli outbreak traced to tainted spinach
An outbreak of E. coli in eight states has left at least one person dead and 50 others sick, federal health officials said Thursday in warning consumers nationwide not to eat bagged fresh spinach.
The death occurred in Wisconsin, where 20 others were also sickened, said Dr. David Acheson of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. The outbreak has sickened others -- eight of them seriously -- in Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah.
FDA officials do not know the source of the…