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Casey Finnerty

Meningitis From Tainted Drugs Puts Patients, Doctors In Quandary : Shots - Health News ... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...s-patients-doctors-in-quandary

microbiology fungi

shared by Casey Finnerty on 05 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • 14,000 Americans
  • alert to illness among patients who have received injections of hundreds of other products
  • the number must run into the tens of thousands.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • it was really a mini-pharmaceutical manufacturer, not the pharmacy it was licensed to be.
  • 1,200 different drugs
  • Apparently, all of this has been caused by contamination of drugs by a black mold called Exserohilum rostratum, which is common in the environment but almost unheard of as a cause of human disease.
  • For instance, on 13 occasions, they said, New England Compounding shipped out vials of drugs in three suspect lots before getting back results of their own tests confirming the drugs were sterile.
  • "indicated a failure ... to sterilize products for even the minimum amount of time necessary to ensure sterility,"
  • The firm's premises were not clean
  • medications were not labeled with individual patients' names
  • he may harbor a fungal infection that could kill him, there's no proof that he does — and there may never be.
  • many anxious patients are undergoing painful spinal taps and some are getting antifungal drugs that can damage the kidneys and liver.
  • The caution is warranted. This type of fungal infection can smolder for weeks and months before exploding into meningitis or causing massive strokes.
  • "It causes a quandary for the infectious disease doc to figure out, well, should this patient receive treatment at all?" O'Connell says. "Should they receive full-boat treatment, which would be an IV? Could they instead just be watched very closely with daily phone calls and visits to the office? We just don't know."
  • "Should we do lumbar punctures on those kinds of people so that we can anticipate those that are going to get symptomatic later and beat the fungus to it?" Schaffner wonders. "That is, initiate treatment much earlier, thus averting tissue damage, particularly those devastating strokes."
  • When to stop is also uncertain.
  • six months, maybe longer.
Casey Finnerty

600 fall ill on cruise ship - chicagotribune.com - 0 views

www.chicagotribune.com/...lness-20140126,0,2482380.story

microbiology virology norovirus

shared by Casey Finnerty on 30 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Passengers staggered off a Royal Caribbean ship reeking of vomit and diarrhea
Casey Finnerty

Global Malaria Deaths Hit A New Low : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...l-malaria-deaths-hit-a-new-low

malaria

shared by Casey Finnerty on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The death rate from malaria dropped by 45 percent globally between 2000 and 2012, the World Health Organization reported Wednesday. In Africa, the rate fell by almost half.
Casey Finnerty

CDC Threat Report: 'We Will Soon Be in a Post-Antibiotic Era' - Wired Science - 0 views

www.wired.com/...cdc-amr-rpt1

microbiology antibiotic resistance

shared by Casey Finnerty on 17 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • And it calls for action in four areas: gathering better data; preventing infections, through vaccination, better protective behavior in hospitals, and better food handling; improving the way in which antibiotics are used, by not using them inappropriately in health care or agriculture; and developing not just new categories of antibiotics but better diagnostic tests so that resistant organisms can be identified and dealt with sooner, before they spread.
  • “My biggest frustration is the pace of change,” he told me. “Hospitals are making progress, but it’s single digits in terms of the number of hospitals that are being very proactive.
Casey Finnerty

Girl, 12, in Critical Condition With Brain-Eating Amoeba - ABC News - 1 views

abcnews.go.com/...eba-case-closes-ark-water-park

microbiology protista

shared by Casey Finnerty on 31 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Casey Finnerty on 31 Jul 13
     
    Link to two videos on N. fowleri infections in Arkansas and Minnesota
Casey Finnerty

Girl, 12, battles brain-eating amoeba after lake swim - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...2599165

microbiology protista

shared by Casey Finnerty on 30 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Naegleria fowleri is a microscopic amoeba that gets to the brain through the nose, typically infecting people who go swimming in freshwater
  • ABC News notes that just one of the 128 people infected with Naegleria fowleri in the US over the last five decades survived.
Nate Scheibe

Cold, salty and promiscuous: Gene-shuffling microbes dominate Antarctica's Deep Lake - 1 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...130930152743.htm

antarctica cold

shared by Nate Scheibe on 30 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Nate Scheibe on 30 Sep 13
     
    An interesting article on bacteria that grow where few other things will.
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