Increase in Fungal Meningitis. Should we be worried?

I read an article on cdc.gov about a recent increase in reports of Fungal Meningitis across multiple states. This is where the whole article can be found.

Fungal meningitis is a non contagious form of meningitis. I thought this was interesting because we had touched briefly in class about meningitis. With over 700 cases across 20 states and over 50 deaths this may be something to think about. While this is not contagious there is still risk of getting it. People have been getting this infection after receiving  contaminated preservative free MPA steroid injections. This first started appearing in October but is still going on today. 

It has been found that people catch this usually when they got injections in the spine. Symptoms for this to look out for at fever, headaches, stiff neck, nausea, and vomiting. The FDA has told people who may have gotten one of these injections or show any of these symptoms or signs of an infection to do a checkup with their local healthcare. 

This outbreak while at first seems not so harmful since it isn't contagious and can be fixed easy if caught in time can still be worrisome. This causes a lot of unneeded caution now if you need to get one of these shots. This should be a problem that we don't have. If this is infecting unopened vial that are meant to be completely sterile is it possible they can infect us in other ways other than just by these injections? 

While they are still unsure exactly how these infections are growing i think it is concerning on what this infection could grow to become. If we cant find a stop to it it could grow larger and larger and even become worse than it is now. People dont want to have to worry that every time they get a shot they could get an infection. It's just another thing we have to worry about and its something that shouldn't even be an issue.  With cases popping up more and more across many states its just a matter of time before it can spread everywhere. Also with a reported 51 deaths from over 700 cases it is something to actually worry about.

While i have confidence that this will not be as big as it could be i feel it is something to take caution in. Hopefully the worse has already come and we can work on reducing the infections. Having to not worry about getting these infections is a burden off our shoulders. For the mean time though i think it's important to watch out for now if you are getting injections until  this is over.

Swedish Sleeping Sickness? Not Quite...

 Having recently wrapped up our unit on influenza, I found this article, accessible at http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Flu_vaccine_linked_to_narcolepsy_in_under_30s_study_999.html to be especially interesting.

We learned in class that in an effort to curb the 1918 outbreak of H1N1 (Spanish Flu), several attempts to make a vaccine were launched that used weakened varieties of bacteria. Unfortunately, as the scientific community of the day did not know about the influenza virus, each one failed. Today, even with our knowledge from centuries of inoculation and immunology research, many still question the effectiveness of vaccines, citing ineffectiveness and side effects.

This article details a link between a Scandinavian flu vaccine Pandemrix (created in Britain) and victims of narcolepsy, a rare condition in which the nervous system will not function properly and a person will suddenly fall asleep. Recipients of the H1N1 vaccine were shown to have a higher rate of narcolepsy than the normal population. Notably, the correlation varied between age groups; patients between 21 and 30 were twice as likely to have narcolepsy than those who were not vaccinated, and recipients under 20 were three times as likely. In Sweden, about 200 children aged 19 or under developed narcolepsy after receiving Pandemrix, while 79 Finnish children were diagnosed; monetary compensation has been planned for those who developed the disease. 

I have occasionally heard news stories about people suffering in America because of the disease, but this is the first time that narcolepsy has become involved. It is also curious that a vaccine for a respiratory disease could result in a condition of the nervous system, especially one so rare as narcolepsy. Previous to reading this article, I did not feel much concern about receiving a vaccine; I receive the annual flu shot, and was vaccinated for swine flu without incident. I think it would be worth researching other types of unusual side effects of vaccines, and this case in Scandinavia will certainly inspire further debate and questions over the safety of such public health measures.

http://www.healio.com/news/online/%7BADF75048-6A39-45AA-892D-DD1A4EEE914B%7D/Stakes-enormous-as-Supreme-Court-weighs-pay-to-delay-generic-drug-deals

This is an interesting article because it affects all of us. We have all been sick or had really bad allergies before. When you go to the local pharmacy and you can buy a brand name medicine such as Claritin or Nyquil, but you can also buy the generic store brand that has some corny name like Wal-itin or CVSquil. These generic medicine have the same active ingredients but are usually much cheaper. This article touches on how the US Supreme Court is now considering changing brand name companies ability to patent medicines and compensate generic dealers. When brand name companies do this the consumer is greatly affected since they are forced to pay the increased price. Generic medicine can offer the same product at almost a third of the price since they do not need to pay for expensive ad campaigns. This relates to Dr. Farmers work in “Mountains Beyond Mountains” where he works to get medicine at a lower cost to the people who need it. Do you think that it is right for companies to work together making it so consumers have to pay more? Is it constitutional to prohibit a company's right to patent their product? I think it is a tough decision because consumers should have the right to cheaper medicine but it is unconstitutional to prevent a company from patenting their product. Its similar to when the iron lung was invented. When John Emerson created a cheaper version of the iron lung, Phillip Drinker sued him. This charade is common in the pharmaceut

ical field and the Supreme Court's decision should put an end to it.

Twitter is the New Bird Spreading the Flu

This article was written by Brooke Jarvis of the Washington Post and can be found at http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-04/national/37429814_1_twitter-data-tweets-mark-dredze.  The purpose of this article is to show that epidemiologists may start using Twitter in order to track influenza outbreaks and other diseases.  Twitter could be a huge help in pinpointing the locations of disease outbreaks but as Mark Dredze, an assistant computer professor at Johns Hopkins University, says, "“The question is: How do you take these billions of messages, find the useful information and get it to people who can respond?”. Dredze has studied computer linguistics for quite some time and knows how to gather information to locate outbreaks and he believes that it could prove to be a great breakthrough.  However, there are some skeptics who believe that twitter is too disorganized and that it would be much harder to gather data than the normal method of going around to hospitals and other public health services.  Also scientists are worried that someone tweeting about a sore throat may lead to false assumptions about outbreaks.  Still, there are many people that believe that this will be successful. “It’s like a pulse on the world, because people will just tweet whatever, whenever,” explains Christophe Girraud-Carrier, an associate professor of computer science at Brigham Young University.  To put it in simple terms the goal is for people to tweet about different outbreaks and then have an alert go out to warn people how to prevent it and how to treat it.  

I found this article to be very interesting, innovative, and appealing.  As a member of the twittersphere I think that this idea would be great and help a lot of people out.  The only thing that could pose as a problem is the development of this technology.  This is something that is going to be very hard to create and could encounter several problems along the way.  Despite that I think that this innovation will be very beneficial to the public and prevent possible epidemics and even pandemics.  Who knows what Twitter will bring to us but I believe that it will eventually be a success.  

Thailand Threatened by Possible Drug-resistant Malaria

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/02/15903518-drug-resistant-malaria-in-thailand-threatens-deadly-global-nightmare?lite

My article was featured on NBC World News titled “Drug-resistant malaria in Thailand threatens deadly global ‘nightmare’” written by Ian Williams. This article talks about the potential threat in Thailand in the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, a part of Mahidol University. The article profiles Dr. Francois Nosten who has in recent month become alarmed because the top medicine to cure malaria, artemisinin, is starting to take a longer time to work for patients, possibly because of resistance from the deadly malaria. If malaria begins to resist this powerful drug, it could cause many issues for the world, especially in places like Africa where the most people die from malaria. Nosten especially fears this resistance because it has happened before, in the 1990s in Africa, and it cause millions of deaths. Nosten states "We must prevent artemisinin resistance reaching Africa, but we also need to control it for the people in Asia - for their future."

“Nobody knows exactly why, but poverty, conflict and large migrant and refugee populations constantly on the move all likely play a part. As do fake drugs or a failure to properly complete a course of treatment.” This treatment usually only took about 24 hours to cure the parasite, but now it is taking 3-4 days, and sooner or later it wont be helping people at all with this terrible disease. Nosten states that where he works in Thailand, "In 2009, we still had 90 percent of patients cured. In 2010, it dropped to 60 to 70 percent. Now it's about 50 percent," The danger with this resistance is that initially it seems like the parasite is gone, but soon it will come back after a few days and the person is again infected.

                                                              Malaria Map of Thailand

I chose this article because it shows how everyday diseases are changing. It is sad that everyone is always in danger of infectious diseases due to the possibility that some day they will mutate and resist their treatments. It is hard, in places like Thailand, where disease is constantly striking the poor. People in Thailand and other poor countries cannot afford for these mutations to occur. They are fortunate to have these treatments but with the conditions they are living in, can’t survive such a resistance.

Singapore Prepared for the Worst

This article is entitled, “Threat of epidemic is ever-present, Gan warns,” by Tan Weizhen. This article was posted by Weizhen on Singapore’s TODAY website about three and a half hours ago. Yesterday, Singapore held their SARS commemorative ceremony at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) in honor of those who lost their lives to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) about a decade ago. Health Minister Gan Kim Yong spoke at the ceremony warning Singaporeans that “the ever-present threat of infectious diseases remains a concern worldwide ... surely it will come one day,” He urges citizens to stay prepared all the time because Singapore is at great risk of another outbreak due to their global connectivity. Gan also stated that the World Health Organization has recently called a global alert for a new virus that has appeared in the Middle East. The virus, Novel Coronavirus, is in the same group as the SARS virus which struck Singapore ten years prior.

Speaking upon the idea of facing another outbreak Gan says that, “If you are talking about a true pandemic, for example H1N1, it spreads very easily... can’t be prevented actually, from person to person. Can the country protect itself against a pandemic the way we did for SARS? It will be difficult, but the smaller outbreaks, yes we can.” In preparation for a new epidemic to hit Singapore they have put in a lot of processes that have been planned and tested such as segregating and managing patients with symptoms of infectious diseases and adding a number of isolation rooms in multiple hospitals.

 In another article on the TODAY website (http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/new-infectious-diseases-hospital-2018) it announces the opening of a new infectious diseases’ hospital by 2018 in Singapore. The preparations Singapore has completed and is working on being completed are all in preparation for a pandemic or outbreak that could take place again. Gan described SARS as “one of the darkest moments in Singapore’s history and yet, is remembered as one of our finest triumphs – when the nation banded together with resilience, determination and compassion,” this quote sums up why Singapore has been increasing efforts and building a whole new facility to combat diseases solely because SARS had such a negative impact on the country and brought them to the realization that they must increase efforts to combat a disease that could hit the country again.

This relates back to our epidemic diseases class because we always look at how a country reacts to an epidemic and what preparations they take in order to prevent it from happening again. In Singapore’s case they improved their health system drastically. They trained doctors and healthcare workers how to treat and manage someone with an infectious disease, have installed hundreds of isolation rooms in their hospitals to act as quarantines, and are in the process of completing the construction of a new infectious disease’s hospital to open by 2018. The positive reaction by Singapore to a national crisis is one that can stand as an example to other countries that being prepared for what could possibly come is the best way to prevent deaths on a large scale from an outbreak.