Tag Archives: Epidemiology

Gonorrhea Evolving; Almost Untreatable

Treatment history. Courtesy of CDC and the AthlanticJames Hamblin, MD, at The Atlantic, here,  writes,

The list of effective antibiotics has been dwindling as the bacteria became resistant, and now it’s down to one. Five years ago, the CDC said fluoroquinolones were no longer effective, but oral cephalosporins were still a common/easy treatment. Now injected ceftriaxone is the only recommended effective drug we have left. And it has to be given along with either azithromycin or doxycycline.

Dr. Hamblin and The Atlantic also reproduced the graphic, above, tracing the treatments in use from 1988 to 2010.  Penicillins stopped being effective in the early 1990’s. While this news is disturbing, it also illustrates how evolution works. A small percentage survive because of natural resistance. They reproduce. Their offspring have the resistant genes.  Whether it’s grey moths that are obvious on trees in pristine environments and difficult to see on trees where the smog coloured the bark, pests in a farm field, or infectious bacteria, the principle is the same.

Looking from a whole systems perspective, maybe we need to develop medications that stimulate the human immune response, rather than medications that try to kill the bacteria. Continue reading →

BBC – E. Coli outbreak waning

According to the BBC, the European E. Coli episode is winding down:

Germany’s health minister says new E. coli infections from a deadly outbreak are dropping significantly and the worst of the illness is over. Daniel Bahr said he was cautiously optimistic the outbreak had peaked, but warned that more deaths were expected as new cases emerged each day.

The outbreak has so far left 24 dead, infected 2,400 and left hundreds with a complication that attacks the kidneys.   Earlier, the EU proposed 150m euros (£134m) of compensation for farmers.But agriculture ministers said they wanted much more and that their producers of fruit and vegetables should be compensated for the full amount of their losses, estimated at up to 417m euros (£372m) a week.

The outbreak was wrongly blamed on Spanish cucumbers last week by the health authorities in northern Germany, the centre of the outbreak. Investigators are still trying to find the real origin of the new strain of enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC). New cases are still being reported every day, including 94 in Germany on Tuesday.

For further reference, see the World Health Organization’s Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) Fact Sheet, and the relevant Wikipedia entry,Escherichia_coli_O157:H7.

Swine Flu forces city officials to close 5 more schools in Queens

From the NY Daily News:

From Erin Einhorn and Meredith Kolodner Swine Flu forces city officials to close 5 more schools in Queens :

Five more schools inside three buildings in Queens will be closed Monday after dozens more students came down with flu symptoms, officials said Sunday.

The closures by the city’s Department of Health bring the total number of schools currently shuttered because of swine flu to 11, meaning thousands of kids will miss class this week.

None of the newly announced schools have confirmed cases of the illness, but enough students were feeling sick that officials thought closures were necessary to halt the spread.

In other words, this isn’t over yet.

Cholera in Iraq

In mid-2003, the World Health organization reported on cholera in Iraq:

rom 28 April to 4 June 2003, a total of 73 laboratory-confirmed cholera cases have been reported in Iraq : 68 in Basra governorate, 4 in Missan governorate, 1 in Muthana governorate. No deaths have been reported.

From 17 May to 4 June 2003, the daily surveillance system of diarrhoeal disease cases in the four main hospitals of Basra reported a total of 1549 cases of acute watery diarrhea. Among these cases, 25.6 % occurred in patients aged 5 years and above.

Link.

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