Infections
Most travelers do not need hepatitis booster
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A single course of hepatitis A and B vaccine is enough to protect most healthy travelers from contracting these infections, and current evidence suggests this protection is lifelong, a team of travel medicine experts concludes.
Hepatitis A and B are serious vaccine-preventable diseases. While the benefit of primary hepatitis A and B vaccination is well established, recommendations on the use of booster shots vary around the world, Dr. Jane N. Zuckerman of the Royal Free and University College Medical School in London and colleagues point out in the latest issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases.
MRSA Infections in Newborns Are On the Rise
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Community-acquired methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections are cropping up with surprising frequency in newborn boys, and mom could be involved, researchers reported here.
“Community-acquired methicillin-resistant staph aureus is a substantial and increasing proportion of staph infection in previously healthy neonates,” Regine M. Fortunov, M.D., of Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. “Individuals who are most at risk are seven to twelve days of age, and male.”
China province hit by cholera outbreak
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A cholera outbreak in a rich eastern Chinese province has sickened 158 people though there have been no deaths reported, state media said.
The waterborne disease, which can quickly cause severe dehydration and death and is connected with unsanitary cooking methods, broke out in the city of Jiaxing in Zhejiang province, close to China’s commercial capital of Shanghai.
Treatment prevents defects from CMV infection
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An expensive but widely established treatment for cytomegalovirus, a common and usually benign virus, can reverse potentially dangerous complications of the disease in the fetus, a study showed on Wednesday.
The study by doctors in the United States and Italy, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, also suggests that ultrasound may be an easy way to screen unborn children for the infection.
Indian state caught napping by deadly disease
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India’s most serious outbreak of encephalitis in three decades, which has killed 750 people and infected thousands in the past two months, could have been prevented if authorities had stuck to an immunisation programme, experts said.
While neighbouring China has drastically cut its infection rate of Japanese encephalitis through mass vaccination programmes, India, which has suffered smaller outbreaks for decades, has consistently ignored it.
Britain to remove mad cow control rule
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Britain’s farm ministry said on Thursday it had accepted a proposal to allow some older cattle to enter the food chain, opening the way for the removal of one of the main measures used to combat the deadly mad cow disease.
The news provided a major boost to Britain’s beef industry that was devastated in 1995 following an outbreak of mad cow in the nation’s herds.
Prototype vaccine protects against fungal infections
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Scientists in Italy have developed and tested a vaccine that protects lab animals against fungal infections that commonly infect people.
Current vaccines work against bacteria and viruses, but fungi can also cause serious disease, especially in people with impaired immune systems. The experimental vaccine developed by Dr. Antonio Cassone and his associates is therefore good news, even if it is only in the early stages of development.
Hepatitis C threatens new generation of Egyptians
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Egyptian children face a high risk of contracting the liver disease Hepatitis C from their parents, probably through the use of dirty needles in a country with one of the world’s highest infection rates, a medical journal said.
About 14 to 18 percent of Egyptians carry the deadly Hepatitis C (HCV) virus. The disease exploded in Egypt between 1960 and 1970, when unsterilised needles were used during a government campaign to treat the water-borne disease bilharzia.
Tourists advised to stay away from animals
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While animal-loving travelers may find it hard to stay away from dogs, cats and other animals, it is a necessary precaution, experts warn.
The warning, contained in a paper in the British Medical Journal this week, comes on the heels of the recent case of a British woman who died of rabies after being bitten by a dog while on a two-week trip in Goa, India. The woman was in her late 30s.
Toronto reports first two West Nile deaths of 2005
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Toronto on Tuesday reported two deaths related to the West Nile Virus, the first for three years in Canada’s largest city.
The city said a 63-year-old man and a 90-year-old man died over the weekend from West Nile, which is carried by birds and transmitted to humans by mosquito bites.
Cholera kills 33 in remote northwest Nigeria
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At least 33 people have died and hundreds have been hospitalized following an outbreak of Cholera in the remote northwestern Nigerian state of Sokoto, officials said on Wednesday.
The victims, including women and children, died over the past three days in three villages in the Sabon Birni district, officials said.
Cholera kills hundreds as rain pounds West Africa
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Cholera outbreaks triggered partly by heavy rains battering West Africa have killed hundreds of people in the past few months, prompting appeals for medicine to help thousands of sufferers, U.N. officials said on Friday.
The disease has struck as far afield as tiny Guinea-Bissau, where the government has banned sales of water in markets to combat the waterborne disease, to giant Congo, where 16 people travelling in a military convoy died of the infection.
New Meningitis Vaccine Being Recommended
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A new vaccine that protects against meningococcal disease is among the recommended immunizations for adolescents and college students this year.
Menactra, manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in January.
Bird flu: from Siberia to Europe
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The Russian government has ordered the immediate slaughter of more than 11,000 birds in the Ural mountains range after some which died of bird flu were found in the area. This was declared by the Russian Emergencies Ministry, which also said it had located the strain of the H5N1 virus in the city of Chelyabinsk in the heart of the geographical divide between Asia and Europe. Government representatives denied that human beings have been struck by the disease.
The virus had already been located in mid-July in Novosibirsk, around 1000km from Chelyabinsk. “Adequate measures are being taken to prevent the spread of infection among domestic birds and to exclude the possibility of human contagion,” declared the ministry. Measures consist of a ban on the sale of poultry in the area and setting up barriers in the streets.
Hong Kong woman contracts pig disease
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A 78-year-old woman in Hong Kong has contracted a pig-borne disease that has killed 39 people in southwest China in recent weeks.
The case is the third in Hong Kong since an outbreak of the disease, caused by the Streptococcus suis bacteria, began in China’s Sichuan province around June. None of the three people had travelled recently outside Hong Kong.
