[Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

[$iljanus]

A few things. First, quarantine for an international plane coming in with sick passengers isn't unusual. That being said, I'm going to assume suggesting it was done over "food poisoning" is a PR move to minimize panic.

"CDC is aware of an Emirates flight arriving at JFK this morning with some passengers who are reporting an unspecified illness," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman Benjamin Hayes said in an emailed statement to NJ Advance Media. "CDC is working with local authorities to investigate and will provide additional information when it is available."

Dozens of ambulances and other emergency personnel have surrounded the plane, video shows.

For the record, there's no foodborne illness that I'm aware of that has "coughing" as a symptom.

Captain Trips, on the other hand...

[Freyland]

Mr. Coben then wonders why he has 10,000 new followers, not realizing that they are all waiting to see if he suddenly stops posting on Twitter.

[Smoove_B]

So they're going with influenza as the suspected cause. Well, at least publicly I guess. I'll update if I find out more and I can say. This is how it begins.

[Jeff V]

Am I the only one disturbed by RM9 following Vanilla Ice on Twitter?

[Isgrimnur]

Science

Meningitis, pneumonia, deadly diarrhea. Antibiotic developers have long struggled to treat such dreaded diseases because the bacteria that cause them have double cell walls with an outer membrane that is particularly difficult for drugs to penetrate. The only new products to fight such gram-negative bacteria in the past 50 years are variations on existing, already approved drugs. Yet resistance to those classes of compounds is soaring. Now, a team of scientists has created a compound that breaches these bacterial outer membranes in a novel way—and could one day save the lives of people infected with bacteria that today foil every gram-negative antibiotic on the market.

The compound has only been tested against bacteria in lab dishes and in mice so far. Still, the new work is a “tour de force,” says microbiologist Lynn Silver, who for more than 20 years developed antibiotics at Merck and is now a consultant based in Springfield, New Jersey. She calls the compound “a highly promising candidate … against highly antibiotic-resistant pathogens.”

A team led by evolutionary biologist Peter Smith at Genentech, the biotech pioneer in South San Francisco, California, began with a class of natural compounds called arylomycins. Various arylomycins can penetrate the outer membrane of gram-negatives, but they have trouble binding to their target, an enzyme embedded in the inner membrane that juts into the space between the inner and outer walls. So Smith and colleagues chemically modified an arylomycin to “systematically optimize” it such that the drug could more easily reach that space—and bind to the enzyme.

[Isgrimnur]

Brain-eating amoeba

A 29-year-old surfer from Atlantic County [NJ] has died of what's been described as a "brain-eating amoeba" after a visit to the wave pool of a Central Texas resort.

Fabrizio Stabile, of Ventnor, had been in the pool at BSR Cable Park in Waco prior to his death at Atlantic City Medical Center on Sept. 21, The Associated Press reported.

Stabile tested positive for Naegleria fowleri -- an amoeba that typically occurs in warm fresh water -- the day before his death, according to a GoFundMe page started by loved ones to create a foundation in his memory.

[LawBeefaroni]

West Nile is making the rounds.


Also:

A 56-year-old man from Hong Kong has developed the world's first human case of rat hepatitis E, Chinese scientists announced Friday.

[Isgrimnur]

Poor, forgotten Hep-D. Always a bridesmaid.

Hepatitis D virus (HDV) is a virus that requires hepatitis B virus (HBV) for its replication. HDV infection occurs only simultaneously or as super-infection with HBV.

[AWS260]

Poor, forgotten Hep-D. Always a bridesmaid.

Hepatitis D virus (HDV) is a virus that requires hepatitis B virus (HBV) for its replication. HDV infection occurs only simultaneously or as super-infection with HBV.

Hep, hep, hooray?

[Smoove_B]

Everyone is focused on HepE, amoebas and West Nile, but let's remember that it's Fungal Disease Awareness week here in the United States. And with that, I'd like to share info about a lesser-known fungal disease - Valley Fever:

Valley fever season starts this month. Most cases surface between September and November, but through August this year, more than 5,000 cases were reported in California, putting the state on pace for a new record.

“We’re seeing a huge increase in new cases in the past two-and-a-half years. It’s striking,” said Ian McHardy, co-director of the Center for Valley Fever at UC Davis. “We’re seeing double and triple the cases. It’s a catastrophic change, and it’s getting worse.”

The fungus typically infects the lungs after spores are inhaled (it is not contracted person-to-person), producing a persistent cough and chest pain or other flu-like symptoms that can require months of treatment.

...

It can be hard to diagnose because it can mimic those of other ailments, and in many people, symptoms fade away on their own.

[LawBeefaroni]

"Valley Fever" sounds like too much time at the indoor mall or a porn addiction or something.

[$iljanus]

"Valley Fever" sounds like too much time at the indoor mall or a porn addiction or something.

Or one of those series of movies that have a number in the title, "Valley Fever 3: The Tubular Sensation" (which could fit with the aforementioned porn addiction or something)

[Smoove_B]

"Valley Fever" sounds like too much time at the indoor mall or a porn addiction or something.

Try telling people to worry about coccidioidomycosis.

Spoiler:

In the 1930s, researchers identified the culprit as a soil fungus during a severe outbreak of coccidioidomycosis in the San Joaquin Valley of California, which also gave the disease its nickname of Valley Fever

[Fretmute]

What I like about that quote is that I imagine researchers in the ‘30s just excising slices of lung through the mouths of patients to facilitate that research.

[Smoove_B]

Here's one you don't see often - downtown LA is dealing with a flea-borne typhus outbreak:

Flea-borne typhus is a disease that infected fleas can spread to humans. Bacteria (Rickettsia typhi and R. felis) found in infected fleas, and their feces, cause typhus. Fleas can come from many types of animals including cats, rats, and opossums. Although pets and animals do not get sick from typhus, typhus can cause high fever, chills, headache, and rash in people and can be treated with antibiotics. Places where there is an accumulation of trash that attract wild animals like feral cats, rats and opossums that may carry an infected flea may increase the risk of exposure. Typhus is not transmitted person-by-person.

“Although typhus normally occurs throughout LA County, we are observing several cases in the downtown Los Angeles area,” said Muntu Davis, MD, MPH, Los Angeles County Health Officer. “We encourage pet owners to practice safe flea control and encourage all cities in the county to ensure maintenance of their trash clean-up and rodent control activities.”

[Smoove_B]

Typhus not interesting enough? How about the return of Ebola?

The committee of experts may make recommendations to manage the outbreak, which was declared on Aug. 1 and has worsened, with a risk of the virus spreading from northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo into Uganda and Rwanda.

Congo’s health ministry said on Monday that in the past week alone 33 people were confirmed with Ebola virus and 24 of them died.

The ministry said the latest cases were confirmed between Oct. 8 and 14. In total, more than 200 suspected cases of the deadly hemorrhagic fever have been reported in this outbreak, all but a couple of dozen of them confirmed, while some 130 people have died since July.

This is not normal.

[Isgrimnur]

I live in Dallas. We already did Ebola. NBD.

[Defiant]

A raging measles outbreak in Europe may be a warning sign of what could occur in the U.S. if something doesn’t change soon, experts say.

So far this year, there have been 41,000 cases in Europe and 40 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The European experience may offer a window on how quickly things can go awry when parents choose not to vaccinate their children, doctors caution.

Because measles is relatively rare in the U.S., many Americans have no idea of the disease's frightening impact and its stunning contagiousness.

link

[Jeff V]

Here's one you don't see often - downtown LA is dealing with a flea-borne typhus

I understand he's seen quite a bit in LA:

[Isgrimnur]

Don't swallow slugs

Sam Ballard, 28, became a paraplegic and suffered for eight years after eating the slug at a party when he was 19.
...
His friend Jimmy Galvin previously revealed that he swallowed the slug while at a party in 2010.

He told The Project: ”We were sitting, having a bit of a red wine appreciation night, trying to act as grown-ups and a slug came crawling across. ‘The conversation came up: “Should I eat it?” off Sam went. Bang. That’s how it happened.’ Within hours he fell seriously ill and it was later discovered that he had been infected with rat lungworm. As a result he suffered in infection on his brain and fell into a coma for 420 days after contracting eosinophilic meningoencephalitis – a strand of meningitis.

[Smoove_B]

I tried warning people last year, but hopefully your message makes an impression!

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo has your back.

[LawBeefaroni]

I tried warning people last year, but hopefully your message makes an impression!

I agree, it does add quite a bit of gravitas to the dare.

[Pyperkub]

Science, saving everyone but the anti-vaxxers...

). In a test tube, the resulting fusion antibodies could neutralize flu strains that neither of their single constituents could alone. When given to mice intravenously a day before the mice were infected with flu, the fusion antibodies were protective against a panel of 60 different flu viruses. And when administered to the mice intranasally a month before infection, they were also able to confer protection.

“If the above preclinical findings translate to humans, an annual intranasal administration may provide passive protection for the entire influenza season and would be of particular benefit to the elderly and other high-risk groups,”

The power of the LLAMA!

[Pyperkub]

Using the Exposome - a very promising method of looking at the environment in conjunction with genetic factors in diseases:

ur health is a combination of genetics and environment. Maybe someone’s genes make them vulnerable to high blood pressure, for example, but by watching what they eat — in effect, controlling their body’s environment — they can keep their numbers within normal levels.

Right now, we know a lot about the genetics side of this combination, as an explosion of research has yielded incredible detail about people’s genetic profiles. We also have insight into how our internal bacterial environments — the microbiome — impact our health. But the environmental piece of the puzzle is still fuzzy. We don’t measure all the chemicals we encounter each day, from the microscopic fungi on a walk to the car exhaust on a highway.

That is, most people don’t.

Michael Snyder, a Stanford biologist and pioneer in genomics, does. For the past several years, Snyder has been wearing a device he invented that measures the environment around him. It’s part of his quest to learn how the environment impacts our health by studying what he calls people’s “exposomes,” or the various air particles, pollutants, viruses, and more that we come into contact with each day.

The bit about how he diagnoses himself with Lyme disease is really interesting, and I can see this taking off into a pretty big personal health care market someday.

[Daehawk]

The Polio 'like' disease continues to spread. More children paralyzed.

https://fox59.com/2018/11/27/polio-like ... n-indiana/

[Isgrimnur]

Well this is terrifying.

A vicious species of tick originating from Eastern Asia has invaded the US and is rapidly sweeping the Eastern Seaboard, state and federal officials warn.

The tick, the Asian longhorned tick (or Haemaphysalis longicornis), has the potential to transmit an assortment of nasty diseases to humans, including an emerging virus that kills up to 30 percent of victims. So far, the tick hasn’t been found carrying any diseases in the US. It currently poses the largest threat to livestock, pets, and wild animals; the ticks can attack en masse and drain young animals of blood so quickly that they die—an execution method called exsanguination.

Much more stuff at the link.

WaPo

But public health officials are worried about the potential for Haemaphysalis longicornis to spread disease. In other parts of the world, it is a major livestock pest; its bites can make people and animals seriously ill. In some parts of Australia and New Zealand, the ticks can suck so much blood from dairy cattle that they cause milk production to drop by 25 percent, researchers have found.

In Asia, the tick carries a virus that causes human hemorrhagic fever and kills up to 30 percent of its victims. Although that virus is not in the United States, it is closely related to the Heartland virus, another life-threatening tick-borne disease that circulates in the United States. Health officials are particularly concerned about the tick’s ability to adapt to be a vector for that virus and other tick-borne illnesses in the United States.

The tick “is potentially capable of spreading a large number of diseases,” said Lyle Petersen, director of CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases. “We really don’t know if diseases will be spread by this tick in the United States and, if so, to what extent. But it’s very important that we figure this out quickly.”

The female tick can also lay hundreds of fertile eggs without mating, “resulting in massive host infestations,” the CDC report said.
...
Warming temperatures and climate change make the environment more hospitable to ticks or mosquitoes that spread pathogens and increase the length of the season when ticks are active, Petersen said.

Next week, officials from several federal agencies — including the CDC, the Agriculture Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service and the Defense Department — are meeting to develop a national coordinated strategy for fighting these vector-borne diseases.
...
“The problems are getting worse and worse,” Petersen said, noting that every state except Alaska is grappling with a rise in these diseases. “We’re losing this battle.”

[Isgrimnur]

Your knowledge of semen sounds scientifically intriguing.

I live to serve. People surviving a hemorrhagic viral infection up until now has been quite rare. However, one of the last times it happened was a researcher that accidentally injected himself with Marburg in the lab waaaaaay back in 1971. Now, Marburg is a close relative of Ebola (not nearly as deadly), so it's not necessarily the same - but the Marburg virus was still found in his semen 61 days after he recovered. In theory this means people *could* be spreading it via semen after being cured and healthy, but we don't know because survival rates for Ebola historically speaking are terrible (< 10%). But I'm willing to bet for those that have been treated here in the United States, they'll be collecting fluid samples for the next year to see if they're still harboring the virus in any capacity.

Don't have sex with the bats, either.

BAT CAVE, QUEEN ELIZABETH NATIONAL PARK, UGANDA

By day, some of the most dangerous animals in the world lurk deep inside this cave. Come night, the tiny fruit bats whoosh out, tens of thousands of them at a time, filling the air with their high-pitched chirping before disappearing into the black sky.

The bats carry the deadly Marburg virus, as fearsome and mysterious as its cousin Ebola. Scientists know that the virus starts in these animals, and they know that when it spreads to humans it is lethal — Marburg kills up to 9 in 10 of its victims, sometimes within a week. But they don’t know much about what happens in between.

That’s where the bats come in. No one is sure where they go each night. So a team of scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traveled here to track their movements in the hopes that spying on their nightly escapades could help prevent the spread of one of the world’s most dreaded diseases. Because there is a close relationship between Marburg and Ebola, the scientists are also hopeful that progress on one virus could help solve the puzzle of the other.

Their task is to glue tiny GPS trackers on the backs of 20 bats so they can follow their movements.
...
U.S. officials are so concerned about Marburg becoming a global threat that the CDC is seeking funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency to cover the cost of the bat trackers, which are about $1,000 each. The CDC is hoping to track more of these Rousettus aegyptiacus bats in several other caves in Uganda.

Marburg’s potential to spread was made clear a decade ago when a pair of tourists on separate trips walked into the cave looking for ad­ven­ture and walked out with the virus. A Dutch woman died 13 days after her visit. The other visitor, an American woman named Michelle Barnes, survived after a long, painful illness.

[$iljanus]

Your knowledge of semen sounds scientifically intriguing.

I live to serve. People surviving a hemorrhagic viral infection up until now has been quite rare. However, one of the last times it happened was a researcher that accidentally injected himself with Marburg in the lab waaaaaay back in 1971. Now, Marburg is a close relative of Ebola (not nearly as deadly), so it's not necessarily the same - but the Marburg virus was still found in his semen 61 days after he recovered. In theory this means people *could* be spreading it via semen after being cured and healthy, but we don't know because survival rates for Ebola historically speaking are terrible (< 10%). But I'm willing to bet for those that have been treated here in the United States, they'll be collecting fluid samples for the next year to see if they're still harboring the virus in any capacity.

Don't have sex with the bats, either.

BAT CAVE, QUEEN ELIZABETH NATIONAL PARK, UGANDA

By day, some of the most dangerous animals in the world lurk deep inside this cave. Come night, the tiny fruit bats whoosh out, tens of thousands of them at a time, filling the air with their high-pitched chirping before disappearing into the black sky.

The bats carry the deadly Marburg virus, as fearsome and mysterious as its cousin Ebola. Scientists know that the virus starts in these animals, and they know that when it spreads to humans it is lethal — Marburg kills up to 9 in 10 of its victims, sometimes within a week. But they don’t know much about what happens in between.

That’s where the bats come in. No one is sure where they go each night. So a team of scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traveled here to track their movements in the hopes that spying on their nightly escapades could help prevent the spread of one of the world’s most dreaded diseases. Because there is a close relationship between Marburg and Ebola, the scientists are also hopeful that progress on one virus could help solve the puzzle of the other.

Their task is to glue tiny GPS trackers on the backs of 20 bats so they can follow their movements.
...
U.S. officials are so concerned about Marburg becoming a global threat that the CDC is seeking funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency to cover the cost of the bat trackers, which are about $1,000 each. The CDC is hoping to track more of these Rousettus aegyptiacus bats in several other caves in Uganda.

Marburg’s potential to spread was made clear a decade ago when a pair of tourists on separate trips walked into the cave looking for ad­ven­ture and walked out with the virus. A Dutch woman died 13 days after her visit. The other visitor, an American woman named Michelle Barnes, survived after a long, painful illness.

And that’s why we need a wall and have Uganda pay for it!

(or funding for the CDC and contributing to any WHO initiatives that deal with this sort of thing...LOL nah)

[Ralph-Wiggum]

It's old now, but I read (er, listened to) The Hot Zone recently. If you're interested at all in Marburg/Ebola and wanted to freak out, it's a good read (er, listen).

[Smoove_B]

Speaking of the Hot Zone (great book, I read it in college when it first came out and I was adequately horrified), we now have an American doctor being monitored in Nebraska after possible exposure:

An American who was potentially exposed to the Ebola virus while treating patients in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been flown to the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

According to the hospital, the U.S. citizen has no Ebola symptoms, but will be monitored closely and if any symptoms develop, the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit will be activated and the person admitted.

The Nebraska Biocontainment Unit is one of a handful of highly advanced facilities in the United States that was built for treating patients with highly infectious diseases.

Must resist funding and PotUS comment..not in R&P...must...resist...

[Isgrimnur]

NBC News

An estimated 17,000 Americans are on the waiting list for a liver transplant, and there’s a strong chance that many of them have alcohol-associated liver disease. ALD now edges out hepatitis C as the No. 1 reason for liver transplants in the United States, according to research published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

One reason for the shift, researchers said, is that hepatitis C, which used to be the leading cause of liver transplants, has become easier to treat with drugs.

[Isgrimnur]

Discover

In a new study out Wednesday, scientists reveal yet another reason to keep up on dental hygiene. Bacteria that cause a common yet largely preventable gum infection may also play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. The discovery also offers hope for a treatment that could slow neurodegeneration.
...
Nearly six years ago, Lynch received a call from Stephen Dominy, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, who had studied the link between HIV and dementia.

“I think I’ve found a bacterial cause of Alzheimer’s,” Dominy, who co-founded Cortexyme with Lynch and now serves as the company’s Chief Scientific Officer, told her. Dominy had spent about 15 years searching for infections that might lead to Alzheimer’s until evidence for a bacterium known as P. gingivalis became “undeniable,” according to Lynch. P. gingivalis causes periodontitis, an infection that destroys the gums and can lead to tooth loss.

When the team examined the brains and cerebrospinal fluid of Alzheimer’s patients, they found DNA from the bacterium. They also discovered bacterial enzymes called gingipains that destroy brain cells were present, too.

And when they watched P. gingivalis infections play out in mice, it triggered neurodegeneration in the hippocampus, a brain structure central to memory. It also led to Alzheimer’s hallmark amyloid beta plaque production and inflammation, the researchers discovered.

The scientists then designed and created a new molecule that blocks the gingipain enzymes. The antibiotic reduced the amount of bacteria in infected mice and stopped the formation of amyloid beta plaques while reducing inflammation, the team reports Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

A treatment using the compound, called COR388, recently passed human safety studies in Alzheimer’s disease patients and healthy adults and will move into the next step of clinical trials this year, Lynch said.

[Paingod]

Sounds like a good case for swishing with the harshest anti-microbial mouthwash you can find each day.

[Isgrimnur]

Sounds like a good case for swishing with the harshest anti-microbial mouthwash you can find each day.

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

Scientists have found evidence of the deadly Ebola virus in a bat in Liberia, the first time the virus has been found in a bat in West Africa, researchers and officials announced Thursday.

A team of scientists working with the government of Liberia presented their findings in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. The discovery represents a major step forward in understanding where human Ebola cases come from, one of the biggest unanswered questions surrounding these outbreaks, said Jonathan Epstein, a scientist with EcoHealth Alliance, a global nonprofit that is part of the research team.

No human cases of Ebola are linked to this discovery, scientists said. Liberia has reported no new human cases since the end of the 2014-2016 epidemic that devastated West Africa, killing more than 11,000 people in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Bats have long been suspected of being a natural reservoir or animal host for Ebola, meaning the virus can live and grow inside the animals without harming them. But more than 40 years and over two dozen outbreaks after Ebola emerged in Central Africa, researchers still don’t know what animal or animals carry it, much less how it spreads to people.
...
The findings add to evidence suggesting that bats could serve as the natural wildlife carrier for Ebola, scientists said. The team found genetic material from the virus and antibodies in the bat’s blood, indicating the animal’s immune response against infection.

But Epstein and others cautioned that much more research is needed. Scientists tested samples taken from 150 Miniopterus inflatus bats in northeastern Liberia. But only one of those bats tested positive, Epstein said.

If this species of bat, known as the greater long-fingered bat, turns out to be a natural host for the virus, scientists would expect to find more than one bat with antibodies against the virus, he said. It’s also possible the bat became infected by another bat species living in the same habitat, he said.

[Kraken]

It's intriguing, with some big questions. Something like 30% of the population has the gingivitis microbe, yet most don't develop Alzheimer's; a lot of Alzheimer's victims don't have the bacterium. And mouse studies frequently don't apply to humans. But Alzheimer's research needs fresh approaches, because treatment hasn't advanced very much despite intensive efforts. We still don't know if beta amyloid deposits are a cause or an effect, for example.

I suspect that Alzheimer's will turn out to be a group of related disorders with disparate causes and triggering factors.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

If poor dental hygiene leads to Alzheimer's, everyone in Britain should have dementia.

[Isgrimnur]

If poor dental hygiene leads to Alzheimer's, everyone in Britain should have dementia.

Where do you think Mad Cow came from?

[Isgrimnur]

food poisoning

In a case that has been highlighted by Dr Bernard on YouTube, a student with poor knowledge of hygiene ended up dying in his sleep after eating 5-day-old pasta.

Unnamed in case reports, the 20-year-old student used to prepare his meals for the week on a Sunday in an attempt to save time and money. He would boil pasta and then put it into Tupperware containers to be eaten during the week after adding a sauce and reheating it, according to Dr Bernard.

The student, from Belgium, reheated spaghetti that had been prepared five days prior and left in the kitchen at room temperature, according to a case study in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. He attributed the odd taste to the new tomato sauce he put on his spaghetti, ate it all and headed out to play sports.

Within 30 minutes of eating the pasta, he was experiencing intense abdominal pain, nausea, and a headache. After returning home, he immediately had intense episodes of watery diarrhea and vomited profusely, but did not seek medical attention and instead chose to stay in his house, drink water, and try to sleep it off.

The next morning his parents were worried when he didn't get out of bed for college. When they went in to check on him at 11am, he was already dead.

Examination of his body revealed he had died at 4am, roughly 10 hours after he ate the spaghetti. His body was autopsied whilst samples of his pasta and pasta sauce were sent off to the National Reference Laboratory for Food-borne Outbreaks (NRLFO) for analysis.

The autopsy revealed liver necrosis, indicating his liver had shut down, as well as possible signs of acute pancreatitis. Fecal swabs revealed the presence of Bacillus cereus, a bacteria responsible for "fried rice syndrome", food poisoning commonly caused by leaving fried rice dishes sitting at room temperature for several hours.