Fungus Fatality

By: Annie White

huffingtonpost.com

            Thinking about what topic I wanted to write for this blog post I began typing in words such as “outbreak” and “epidemic” into the search bar of every News source online. What consistently came up was the word, meningitis. Immediately, I thought back to the day I came home from school about two months prior. I had turned on the news when I came home and remembered hearing a report about a meningitis outbreak linked to tainted steroid injections, but never listened to the news report long enough to get the full story. With the little information that I could remember I typed in, “tainted steroid injections cause of meningitis,” and clicked on the most recent article. Sure enough, it was the story I had heard two months back.

            The article title is, Meningitis Outbreak: 404 Cases, 29 Deaths, by Katie Moisse written on November 2^nd, 2012 from ABC World News. The story can be found at the link: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/meningitis-outbreak-404-cases-29-deaths/story?id=17629376 .

                Before Health officials knew it, cases of Meningitis began appearing rapidly at the same time. In almost all of the cases, the victims had received a steroid injection used to treat back and joint pain. The vials of methylprednisolone acetate (steroid) were sealed and distributed by the New England Compounding Center located in Framingham, Massachusetts. The vials were tested and were found to contain a fungus, exserohilum rostratum, commonly found in plants and the soil.                                                   

            Inspection ensued but still no evidence as to how the fungus made its way into the sealed, once thought sterile, vials was found. What they do know, however, is that these vials with the contaminated fungus were never shipped to clinics to be screened prior to being distributed. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health inspector claimed that floor mats near the sterile drug-mixing areas were “Visibly soiled with assorted debris,” also adding that there was a leak from a nearby boiler making an “environment susceptible to contaminant growth.” These three factors, the vials not receiving a sterility test, being exposed to debris and a warm and moist environment, are major contributing factors to the steroid becoming contaminated and being distributed without doubt or suspicion.  

            Once patients received this tainted steroid injection they began feeling early symptoms such as headaches, fever, dizziness, nausea, sensitivity to light, weakness or numbness, stiff neck, slurred speech and pain, and swelling or redness at the injection site. These symptoms come from fungal meningitis, which affects the membranous lining of the brain and spinal cord. The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tallied the number of cases to 404 in 19 states. 395 of these cases were fungal meningitis while the other nine were joint infections. Out of the 404 cases, 29 people have died.

            In a few ways, the contributing factors leading to the outbreak of Cholera are similar to the factors leading to the outbreak of meningitis, these factors being recklessness and filthiness. The cholera epidemic was all made possible to the recklessness of London’s society and the filthiness of their streets. They chose to look past the obscenities taking place before their eyes, waste piling up in the basements of houses and scavengers roaming underneath the grounds in the sewers, and also chose not to do something about it until it was far too late and cholera had struck their people. What astonishes me is that our society still has not learned from past mistakes that recklessness and abandonment always lead to disaster. The vials of the steroid injection were produced in unsanitary conditions, described by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health as having floors covered with debris and a leak close by to the vials. The filthiness in which the steroids were made in are what caused the fungus to slip into the vials, and recklessness is what the New England Compounding Center demonstrated when they did not have their vials pass through clinics of sterility testing.

            What I find truly frightening is that this outbreak was caused by a steroid injection given to reduce pain in the back and joints, yet instead, proved life-threatening to patients who received the injection and contracted meningitis. All could have been avoided with the technology and privileges we are provided today. Had the New England Compounding Center cleaned up their stations where the injection was being produced then the fungus may not have slipped in, or have been able to grow had the conditions not have been moist and warm due to a nearby boiler leak. Even if sanitary conditions were not up to par, a sterility testing at a clinic could have found the fungal meningitis in the contaminated vials and stopped them from being distributed to the public. But sadly none of this had transpired, and instead recklessness and filthiness were triumphant killing 29 of their Meningitis victims.