posted 09-26-2002 04:22 PM            

BTW, I found another mysterious rash report.

Halifax workers contract mysterious rash

By RAY WEISS (ray.weiss@news-jrnl.com)
Staff Writer

DAYTONA BEACH -- Halifax Medical Center on Tuesday acknowledged that seven employees who worked behind a desk area in the outpatient radiology department came down with a mysterious rash last week.

Kate Holcomb, a hospital spokeswoman, said five have returned to work, and a sixth is expected back today at the office building just north of the hospital, where Halifax leases space.

She said the seventh person is out with an unrelated medical problem. The hospital said it was handling the matter internally until "rumors started circulating" about the severity of the incident and the condition of those who worked at the registration desk on Sept. 11, the anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy.

"We were looking into it and meeting with employees," she said. Holcomb said no contaminants were found in the "confined, non-public area," and that tests are continuing to determine the cause. "We're looking into what kind of cleaning solutions were used," she said.

Holcomb said it appears the rash was limited to the seven workers.

"No one else who came through the area had a problem," Holcomb said. "But we want to leave the area closed until we determine what caused their sensitivity."

posted 10-02-2002 12:23 AM            

Brain Defect Study Finds Mutation

By LARA JAKES JORDAN

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON- A newly discovered fatal gene mutation, found only in Amish newborns, could be a major first step toward preventing brain defects in babies worldwide, scientists said Tuesday.

The genetic disorder, known as Amish microcephaly, is specific to the Old Order Amish community in Lancaster County, Pa., where it has been traced back nine generations to one couple. It amounts to a breakdown in DNA creation that causes abnormally small heads and brains in fetuses and, eventually, death.

New information on the disorder - the result of a 2 1/2-year study by the National Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Md. - could help doctors find ways to stop the DNA breakdown in other kinds of brain defects in newborns.

The study is the first of its kind to link problems with DNA production to fetal brain development, said Dr. Leslie Biesecker, the report's lead author, a senior investigator at the Institute's Genetic Disease Research Branch. It was first reported in the September issue of "Nature Genetics."

"What this disease appears to be is the inability to move those (DNA) building blocks into a particular place of the cell where they need to be," Biesecker said. "What we have to do is see if we can manipulate that, and supplement or do other medical tricks to get around that problem."

In Lancaster County, where about 20,000 Amish people descend from only a few dozen who settled there in the 1700s from Germany, 61 babies from 23 families have had the disorder in the last 40 years.

Most of the babies died in their first six months; none survived more than 14 months. There is no known treatment or cure. Dr. D. Holmes Morton, who heads the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Pa., and helped write the study, said he has cared for more than 20 Amish babies with the disorder since 1988. He sees as many as three new cases every year.

"It's a disorder that has shown up in the community for many, many generations," Morton said. "The Amish people knew about it, but very few other people had seen it."

Interestingly, Morton said, the DNA breakdown does not affect development in other parts of the fetus, which means that babies born with the defect have normal and healthy hearts, livers, kidneys, and other vital organs. That suggests that the DNA building blocks - specifically, a nucleic acid - are being received in developing cells in other parts of the body.

"It's precisely that kind of thinking about a mutation and about a mechanism of a disease like this that lets us think of possibilities about how you get around it," Morton said.

Dr. Victor A. McKusick, a professor of medical genetics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and one of the nation's top genome experts, praised the study and said its release would likely result in more physicians testing for the disorder.

"This will be described in other ethnic groups," said McKusick, who also has researched Amish genetic disorders for years. "To my knowledge, it has not been as of yet." McKusick said "as soon as these papers are published, people will be looking for it and testing for it."

On the Net: National Human Genome Research Institute: http://genome.gov/

posted 10-08-2002 08:19 PM            

Doctors keep vigil over premature babies


John Bermingham
The Province

Sunday, September 29, 2002


A hospital superbug has struck three tiny premature babies -- and doctors at B.C. Children's Hospital can only watch, wait and hope.The potentially deadly MRSA bacteria were discovered a few days ago during screening at the hospital's intensive-care unit (ICU).

The strain is resistant to antibiotics such as penicillin and methicillin.

Only vanco, or vancomycin, can, as a last resort, wipe the bugs out -- but the risk of injecting babies with more bacteria could worsen their precarious health.Meantime, the killer bug can become even stronger.

"It's difficult to predict," says Dr. Alfonso Solimano. "It's not something that is easy to get rid of."

The good news is that the superbug is living on the babies' skin right now, meaning the children are not actually infected. But should the bug get into their bloodstreams, it could cause sepsis, a potentially lethal blood infection.

The babies will be kept in isolation for three to four months until the superbug dies out on its own.The babies' blood will be continually tested for MRSA, and doctors will watch for signs like fever or breathing problems.

Solimano says the babies are not showing any symptoms, but one baby is at greater risk because of other health problems.

"We are keeping a very close eye," he said from the hospital yesterday. "If they get infected, we will give them the antibiotics."

Meantime, in a separate outbreak, six other premature babies have been hit with parainfluenza. They're suffering flu-like symptoms but are expected to recover within the week.

Together, the situation poses a logistical nightmare for the hospital. A total of 38 babies have been split into five separate groups of healthy, exposed and infected babies.

"Babies exposed are separated from new babies coming in," said Solimano.Should the outbreak get out of control, hospitals in New Westminster and Victoria are on standby, and Alberta is also an option.

The infection was either transmitted through a staff person, a parent or from one baby to the others.

The babies' parents have been asked to limit visits by others and to take extra hygiene precautions.

"They are already going through a lot of stress," said Solimano. "The more people coming through the nursery, the higher the risk of spreading the infection."

An outbreak of MRSA at B.C. Children's in 1998 killed two babies and infected 47. This time, doctors know what to expect.

"Of course, we're worried," said Solimano. "[But] I feel we are in a much better position to control this before it becomes more spread out."

WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT

Methicillin-resistant Staphyloccus aureus bugs are single-cell bacteria that fight almost anything that humans can throw at them.That's why they're also called "the cockroaches of the microbial world.

"MRSA was discovered in the early 1960s after it ravaged hospitals with infections and deaths.The bug has been found on catheters, hospital cottons and cuddly bunnies.MRSA is commonly carried in healthy people, says B.C. Children's Hospital microbiologist Rusung Tan, but normal people have immune systems strong enough to keep it at bay.

The old and the young are at greatest risk because their immune systems are weakened.

Scientists have discovered that the bugs acquire genes to resist antibiotics from other bacteria.

Sort of like Charles Darwin meets Dr. Frankenstein.Hundreds of MRSA strains have been found, suggesting that harmless strains may be acquiring genes that make them a new menace.

The big question for all of us is: How long can we keep one step ahead of these superbugs?

posted 10-11-2002 01:37 PM            

Bubble Boy Disease Baffles Doctors

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
ASSOCIATED PRESS

GAITHERSBURG, MD.- A French toddler suffering a leukemia-like side effect from gene therapy that was used to cure an immune disorder called "bubble boy disease" is doing well, but scientists said Thursday they still haven't pinpointed what caused his illness.

There are clues, however, that a virus used in the treatment may be to blame, by accidentally causing a gene responsible for the formation of certain blood cells to become overactive.

No other children given gene therapy for the disease - severe combined immunodeficiancy, or SCID - have shown such a side effect.

Still, scientists in France and the United States last week suspended studies of the gene therapy until they could decide whether additional safety steps are needed.

SCID is the only disease ever cured by gene therapy.

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration began a daylong meeting Thursday to evaluate what evidence there is that the treatment itself caused the 3-year-old to develop a leukemia-like illness.

The boy's physician, Dr. Alain Fischer, told the group by telephone from Paris that blood tests show the toddler's immune cell counts have returned to normal. He will do more tests soon to see if the child is in full remission, or whether he may need additional leukemia treatment.

SCID is a very rare inherited disease, occurring in about 1 in 75,000 births, in which patients' bodies don't make disease fighting immune cells. Without treatment, they die very young.

The best known victim was David, Houston's famous bubble boy, who lived in a germ-proof enclosure until his death at age 12 in 1984.

The most severe form, X-SCID, afflicts only boys. Those given a bone marrow transplant from a genetically compatible brother or sister are likely to be cured - but only 20 percent of X-SCID patients have a sibling who is a good match.

When those without a good match undergo a transplant anyway, a quarter die - although Duke University scientists told the FDA panel Thursday that they achieve a far better success rate when they can transplant into newborns instead of older babies.

Gene therapy however has worked in nine of the 11 X-SCID patients treated so far in Paris, thus creating great excitement until last week's announcement of the first side effect.

Fischer drew bone marrow from the boys and culled immune-cell creating stem cells from it. He mixed in a virus containing a gene the boys' bodies lacked.

Injected back into the boys, cells worked properly, giving them a working immune system. Scientists long theorized that cancer might occur if the therapy's virus lodged near certain genes that control cell growth and effected them too.

Painstaking analysis of the ill toddler's DNA, taken at different points after his gene therapy three years ago, shows that the SCID-correcting gene landed backward inside a cancer-promoting gene called LMO-2.

It happened sometime after the SCID-correcting gene also landed in the right place, curing the boy's immune disorder.

He appeared healthy until August, when scientists found leukemia-like overproduction of white blood cells. But the LMO-2 overactivation may have been occurring 17 months earlier, Fischer and Dr. Christof Calle of the University of Cincinnati told the panel.

However, it's still not clear if that alone is to blame. Cancer runs in the boy's family, something else under investigation.

The FDA panel will decide if more research is needed on this safety question before three U.S. studies of gene therapy for SCID patients will be allowed to restart.

posted 11-13-2002 09:29 PM            

ABC13 Eyewitness News

(11/12/02) — There's something spreading among the students in Pasadena's independent school district.

Since the beginning of the school year, there have been about 50 cases of MRSA, a staph infection that is resistant to certain antibiotics and can be tough to treat.

This bacterial infection was actually discovered about two weeks into the school year. Officials believe the infection may have started with some of the team sports, like the football team.

Pam Exner has two children who have contracted a bacterial staph infection known as MRSA. She says they got it at Sam Rayburn High School where they both attend class.

Exner asserted, "Everybody at school's got it, all the football players and the dance team."Pam says her son, who's on the football team, has had to make 20 trips to the doctor so far, and has missed about 13 days of school because of the boils that attack his skin.

The symptoms first appeared two months ago.

Exner isn't happy with the way the school district is responding. "I haven't heard anything that they've done over there yet. I mean, half of the parents are really ticked off about it. I talked with three parents already, they're really mad about it."

We told Pasadena ISD Spokesman Kirk Lewis about the parents' complaints that the district hasn't done anything to correct the situation. "We've done everything we know to do," he responded.

Pasadena ISD says 29 students at Rayburn have been affected, and 50 district-wide. Officials say they took safety measures right after the initial outbreak.

Lewis told Eyewitness News, "We initially went through and cleaned all the gyms with an extra disinfectant just to try and make sure that the surfaces were clean. And then, as we began talking with the health department and the physicians, that's not the way this is contracted."

Lewis says county officials report MRSA is spread through human contact, and that could be why the football team got hit so hard. But he says the school district is doing all it can, and the kids should, too.

"Everybody bathes and takes care of themselves, but in times like this I think we just need to do a little bit more," Lewis advised.

The Harris County Health Department is sending out a questionnaire to all the parents around the school district and county-wide to try to get an idea how widespread this problem is.

Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA for short, is a type of staph infection. Most of you know it as a very common infection. Ninety percent of the time it's a simple skin infection that's easily treated. But sometimes it can be serious.

"Ninety percent of the time MRSA is a local skin and soft tissue infection, treated generally with oral antibiotics and occasionally may require drainage and an abscess," explained Dr. Sheldon Kaplan of the Baylor College of Medicine.

Probably nothing to worry about unless you see these symptoms:

,Redness that spreads or begins to streak
Swelling

.Enlarging infection that isn't responding to simple cream antibiotics

.Fever

posted 03-15-2004 12:35 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Transfered:
someone tell me i am not blind.

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You are definitely NOT blind. Although many people will argue that nothing unusual is going on in our skies! ha! Regardless of what anyone tells you, go by your instincts, in all things, ALWAYS! Then you'll never go wrong.