outbreak
tsmith | May 4, 2006Cheyenne shelter dogs to be euthanized
All 70 to 80 dogs at the Cheyenne Animal Shelter will be euthanized because of an outbreak of canine influenza that has closed the shelter for more than two weeks, shelter officials announced.
Shelter officials said there was no way to test for the virus quickly and thus no way to tell which dogs were infected. Shelter director Alan Cohen said that unless all the dogs were killed, he couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't re-infect themselves and other animals.
"If I do not euthanize these animals, how can I let them loose knowing they might spread it to…
tsmith | April 14, 2006If you're in the food service industry, don't go back to work while you still have an intestinal bug. Or, fer crimeny's sake, at least wash your hands thoroughly.
The majority of cases of foodborne gastroenteritis in the United States are caused by noroviruses. This report summarizes an investigation by the Kent County Health Department (KCHD) in Michigan into three norovirus outbreaks and a cluster of community cases that were associated with a national submarine sandwich franchise restaurant during May 3--9, 2005. The investigation identified a potential source, a food handler who had…
tsmith | April 13, 2006Orac highlighted here a post over at Vox Populi which doubted the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine, in light of the recent epidemic in Iowa. I was prepared to write a whole post on the math of it, but Mark at Good Math, Bad Math saved me some work. Nevertheless, I have a few things to add after the jump.
As has been mentioned, the given efficacy rate for the mumps vaccine is 95%. This is actually likely a bit high; previous outbreaks have suggested it's more like 85-90% effective, so that as many as 15% of the vaccinated population won't actually be immune. The key to telling whether…
tsmith | April 13, 2006 Okay, so I lied. I was planning to wrap up the emerging diseases and zoonoses series with the post on monkeypox, but I think I'll just continue it as a sporadic event, since a new paper fits into the series perfectly.
I talk a lot here about streptococcus. As regular readers know, there's a good reason for that. Though my main research right now is on Streptococcus agalactiae (group B streptococcus, GBS), I also have a project working on a related organism, Streptococcus suis. As the "suis" name suggests, this is mainly a pathogen of swine. Indeed, it's kind of the pig equivalent of…
tsmith | April 11, 2006I attended a lecture yesterday given by Patty Quinlisk, Iowa's state epidemiologist. The bad news: there have been over 500 reported cases of mumps as of Monday, April 10, with more cases in neighboring states (30-50 in Nebraska, for example). She did, however, give a bit more history on the epidemic, described below.
The outbreak can be traced back to last December, when 2 cases were found to be IgM-positive for mumps. (IgM is the first type of antibody produced to a new infection; therefore, this is diagnostic of a current infection, whereas looking at a different type of antibody--…
tsmith | April 7, 2006 For the final post of the series, I want to discuss yet another outbreak, this one a bit closer to home: that of monkeypox in the United States in 2003.
First, I should note that "monkeypox" is a bit of a misnomer. Though the virus--a relative of smallpox and cowpox--can infect monkeys (and humans), the reservoir host is likely a rodent. Previously, monkeypox had been found mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, in forested regions. 2 clades of the virus had been identified. One was common in West Africa, and generally didn't cause severe disease when humans became infected with it. The other…
tsmith | April 6, 2006 I've touched on the broad issue of "cultural practices" that can lead to emerging diseases in a few posts already (such as farming practices and cockfighting and avian influenza, or petting zoos and bacterial diseases), but today I'm going to go into a bit more detail with the specific example of the emergence of Nipah virus in Malaysia.
Nipah is a paramyxovirus, in the same family as measles and mumps. The virus was first recognized in 1999, during an encephalitis outbreak in Malaysia that had begun the previous September. The vast majority of the cases had occupational exposure to…
tsmith | April 4, 2006 I mentioned last week that Iowa's suffering from a large outbreak of mumps. An update, from the March 30th Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report:
In the United States, since 2001, an average of 265 mumps cases (range: 231--293 cases) have been reported each year,* and in Iowa, an average of five cases have been reported annually since 1996. However, in 2006, by March 28, a total of 219 mumps cases had been reported in Iowa, and an additional 14 persons with clinically compatible symptoms were being investigated in three neighboring states (11 in Illinois, two in Nebraska, and one in…
tsmith | March 31, 2006 So far this week, I've mostly been talking in generalities--the introductions to the topic, or how the animals we eat or other types of human behavior can put us at greater risk for the emergence of such diseases. Today I want to talk about a more specific example: an ongoing outbreak of a virus called chikungunya.
Chikungunya (from the Swahili word for "stooped walk," or "that which bends up" depending on who you believe, referring to the posture of a person suffering from the disease) is an arbovirus: a virus that is transmitted by insects. In this case, the insect in question is the…
tsmith | March 27, 2006Sometimes amid all the news about H5N1, the "old and boring" diseases get overlooked, such as chickenpox and mumps.
State health officials said they are concerned about a rare strain of virus behind an outbreak of 60 mumps cases in Iowa.
Mary Gilchrist, director of the state's University Hygienic Laboratory, said the genotype G strain is infrequently seen in the United States. With the number jumping from 17 cases just two weeks ago, she predicted there could be more outbreaks this spring.
"If the past predicts the future, it will get worse in April," she said.
(Continued below)
Recall that…
tsmith | March 8, 2006Not the Batman kind--the influenza kind.
I received a questionnaire yesterday from ABC news. Apparently, they're doing a story on pandemic influenza preparation. Included were questions like, "What would you recommend to those individuals who are trying to obtain antiviral medications for their own personal preparedness? When should they start taking them?" and "What would you recommend to individuals who are trying to obtain face masks for their own personal preparedness? When should they start wearing them?", as well as questions about food and water stockpiling and going to work/school…
tsmith | February 26, 2006Necrotizing fasciitis (the so-called "flesh-eating disease") is a rare manifestation of infection with the group A streptococcus (Streptococcus pyogenes, though occasionally other bacteria cause it as well). Apparently, it's been a banner year for the infection in Boulder, Colorado. The Daily Camera (registration required) has the story:
Sixteen months after University of Colorado physicist Eric Cornell lost his left arm and shoulder to a rare, invasive form of strep A, at least three more otherwise healthy Boulder residents have been stricken by the same disease in the past four months.…
tsmith | February 9, 2006This question was discussed yesterday in the comments to this post. An article in yesterday's New Scientist offers some ideas:
But New Scientist can reveal that the location of Africa's first reported outbreak should not come as a surprise. The region affected is right beside a major wintering ground for two relatively common species of duck. Those ducks shared breeding grounds in Siberia last summer with birds that winter in Turkey and around the Black Sea, where the virus also appeared recently.
Furthermore, Kano is near the Hadejia-Nguru inland river delta, which is a major wintering…
tsmith | January 10, 2006I've been meaning to write something up about this for awhile, but keep forgetting. Anyhoo, because my own dog is currently ill and it's stressing me out watching her (not due to this, thankfully), I thought I'd do my own little part to get the word out to any dog owners who may not have heard of this recall.
Diamond Pet Food Recalled Due to AflatoxinDiamond Pet Food has discovered aflatoxin in a product manufactured at our facility in Gaston, South Carolina. Aflatoxin is a naturally occurring toxic chemical by-product from the growth of the fungus Aspergillus flavus,, on corn and other crops…
tsmith | December 5, 2005Clostridium difficile has joined MRSA, SARS, avian influenza, and West Nile as a hot new emerging disease. This bacterium, a cousin to Clostridium tetani-the causative agent of tetanus--and Clostridium botulinum--the botulism bacterium--is a spore-forming anaerobe. Carried by about 3 percent of healthy adults, the bacterium is generally present as a metabolically inactive spore. The bacterium typically causes problems in the nosocomial (hospital) environment, where up to 40 percent of hospital patients may be colonized. Clinical disease generally presents as watery diarrhea and cramps, and…
tsmith | October 24, 2005Doctors recommend hepatitis shot for kids
Hepatitis A is a virus that causes (obviously) hepatitis, as well as jaundice, fatigue, nausea, fever, loss of appetite, and diarrhea. It's often spread fecal-orally; that is, you put something in your mouth that has fecal contamination. (Just makes you want to run to the bathroom and brush your teeth, doesn't it?) It also can be spread via sexual contact and shared needles (or other contact with blood or body fluids). It's estimated that there are ~40,000 acute cases of Hep A per year, with many of them going undiagnosed. It's one of those diseases…
tsmith | October 19, 2005It's situations like this that really irk me.
I mentioned the tularemia detection in DC here almost 2 weeks ago, already annoyed that there hadn't been more information about it. There has been some discussion on the ProMed list, but it's hardly been a blip in the mainstream media. Yesterday, there was an article in Salon further discussing it.
The background:
On Sept. 24, 2005, tens of thousands of protesters marched past the White House and flooded the National Mall near 17th Street and Constitution Avenue. They had arrived from all over the country for a day of speeches and concerts to…
tsmith | September 16, 2005The Washington Post today reminds us that there has been little progress in uncovering the source of the 2001 anthrax attacks. [1]
First, a disclaimer. I'm not an "evolutionary biologist," per se. I have what is I swear the longest job title ever--molecular infectious disease epidemiologist. As such, I often get asked, "what's the relevance of evolution to your work?" Or, I'll read editorials such as Dr. Skell's recently in The Scientist [2] questioning the use of evolutionary theory in experimental biology, and be disheartened. Yet the method of investigating the anthrax attacks shows…