New Virus discovered in the U.S!

Medic-ALL (02:21:2015) DISEASE

The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC said on Friday, February 20 that the mysterious death of a man in Kansas, U.S last year appears to have been caused by a previously unknown virus.

Naming it the Bourbon virus after the county where the man had lived, researchers from the CDC, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and the University of Kansas classified the agent as a new member of the Thogotovirus genus, others of which are known to cause human disease.

The middle aged man had presented in the late spring of 2014 with fever and fatigue. Laboratory examinations revealed thrombocytopenia (low level of platelets) and leukopenia( low level of white blood cells). He reported numerous tick bites in the days prior to falling ill. He was consequently treated with doxycycline, but there was no improvement and he shortly developed multi-organ failure, dying of cardiopulmonary arrest 11 days after symptom onset.

His blood was tested for known tickborne diseases ( Lyme's , Rocky Mountain spotted Fever) but these were negative. However, the investigators reported, "testing of a specimen for antibodies against Heartland virus indicated the presence of another virus."

Electron microscopy revealed virus particles unlike those of known tickborne pathogens in the U.S.; the research team classified them as within the Orthomyxoviridae family, and with further study as a previously unknown Thogotovirus.

The researchers indicated that they would now look to see if Bourbon virus has been present in other human infections. They also plan to "explore its potential geographic distribution and confirm tick as been the vectors.

The discoveries of Bourbon virus, Heartland virus, and similar tickborne diseases in recent years "suggest that the public health burden of these pathogens has been underestimated," the researchers concluded.

Via Mepage Today
Edited by Kayode Kuku for Medic-ALL blog 

Medic-ALL Inc 2015

HISTORIC! Infant Gets Heart Transplant

Medic-ALL (02:13:2015)  MEDICAL:

A 6-day-old premature baby born in Arizona, United States of America has become the youngest infant to receive a heart transplant. The baby Olivier Crawford had the operation at Phoenix Children's Hospital, Arizona after he was born 7 weeks prior to scheduled date with a life-threatening heart condition and amidst fears by the doctors hat he may not survive birth. 

Historic! 6-day-Old gets Heart Transplant in U.S hospital

Doctors had first noticed something was amiss during Caylyn Otto’s 20 week prenatal exam. She was subsequently put in the care of pediatric cardiologist Dr. Christopher Lindblade at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, who was shocked at the size of the fetus’ heart.

The left ventricle was huge for a 24-week-old,” Lindblade told The Arizona Republic. “It was massive.”

The formal diagnosis was dilated cardiomyopathy ( a condition associated with dilated heart chambers and impaired contractility).Doctors told Otto and the baby's father  that their child may be born stillborn, and if he made it through delivery he would likely need a heart transplant.

The mother, Otto was told that her son would have the best chance of survival if he made it to a 36-week delivery, but she went into labor after 33 weeks of gestation.

Within hours of birth, the baby was screened to ascertain he was healthy enough to have a heart transplant procedure and then was placed on the transplant list on January 9th, 2 days after which a viable heart became available. The operation lasted 10 hours and the baby is presently in recovery.

Though his lungs are too weak for him to be taken home and doctors aren’t sure how long it will be until he is released, his body hasn’t rejected the heart, the report said.

The new parents held a baby shower for him, and brought his infant car seat to his hospital room.

The Doctors at Phoenix Children’s Hospital believe Oliver is one of the youngest patients to ever receive a heart transplant.

The entire medical community does perceive Olivier's case,  something truly miraculous.

Ref: FoxNewsHealth

Record Drop in Ebola Cases since June

Medic-ALL (01:29:2015)

The health world continues to get the better of the deadly Ebola virus disease with latest reports showing a significant drop in the number of cases of the disease since June, 2014 when the disease began ravaging parts of the African continent  (where many of the countries initially affected have now been declared Ebola-free) and later spread to other parts of the world including the United States and parts of Europe. This Cable News Network (CNN) report puts in perspective the road to achieving this decline in the number of cases of the deadly virus particularly in the largely affected nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Read Here
http://www.cnn.com//2015/01/29/africa/ebola-virus/index.html

Ebola: West African Nation Declared Free

Medic-ALL (01:18:2015) Healthcare News-

Ebola virus stopped in yet another West African Country

The Government of the West African nation, Mali today declared the country free of the deadly Ebola virus following a 42-day period without a new case of the disease.

Mali's Health Minister Ousmane Koné declared this in a statement in which he thanked the country's health workers and international partners for their work which helped to see a halt to the outbreak.

Countries must report no new cases for 42 days - or two incubation periods of 21 days - to be declared Ebola-free.

Mali recorded a total of seven deaths caused by the Ebola outbreak that began just over a year ago

According to World Health Organization (WHO) data the worst epidemic of the viral haemorrhagic fever on record has killed more than 8,400 people, mostly in neighbouring Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

At least 21,296 people have so far been infected with the virus worldwide.

Mali's last infected patient recovered and left hospital early last month. At one point health officials had been monitoring more than 300 contact cases.

Mali became the sixth West African country to record a case of Ebola when a two-year-old girlfrom Guinea died in October. It was close to being declared Ebola free in November before a second wave of infections.

The country now joins other West African countries Nigeria and Senegal who had been declared Ebola-free in the last couple of months.

Medic-ALL.Inc 2015

Ref: BBC, WHO

Flu Deaths hit Epidemic threshold

Medic-ALL (01-04-2015) via MedPage Today's Michael Smith

The year 2014 ended with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC reporting the onset of the dreaded flu season, with the proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza reaching the epidemic level.

In the week ended Dec. 20, 6.8% of all deaths observed through the agency's 122 Cities Mortality Reporting System were attributed to pneumonia and flu.

That matches the epidemic threshold for week 51 of 2014, calculated to be significantly higher than a seasonal baseline that uses data for the same week in the previous 5 years, the CDC reported.
At the same time, the rate of influenza-like illness, reported as a percentage of outpatient visits, is elevated both nationwide and in all 10 of the CDC's surveillance regions, the agency said in its weekly flu report.
The proportion of respiratory specimens testing positive for the flu was 28.1% nationally, with a range from 11.3% to 35.9%.

As well, the CDC said, there were four pediatric deaths associated with the flu in week 51, leading to a cumulative total of 15 since the week ending Sept. 28.
Most of the circulating flu is influenza A (H3N2), with a small amount of A (pH1N1) -- the strain responsible for the 2009-2010 pandemic. Only 2.7% of tested samples are influenza B.

Within the 2,023 influenza A samples that were subtyped in week 51, all but one were H3N2, the agency reported.

Flu seasons in which H3N2 virus predominates are usually more severe, and the CDC has previously noted that most of the H3N2 flu that is circulating does not match the H3N2 component of the seasonal vaccine. That continued to be the case in week 51, the agency said.

Those two factors could combine to make this an unusually harsh flu season, but, on the positive side, all of the tested samples, regardless of subtype or strain, were susceptible to neuraminidase inhibitors such as oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza).

Medic-ALL.inc 2015
medicallblog@gmail.com

LIFE AFTER MED SCHOOL: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE LEAVING MEDICAL SCHOOL

Medic-ALL (23:12:2014) EPISODE 1 by Kayode Kuku

How ironic is it that after spending nearly a decade in the fore walls of medical school, medical graduates leave school and yet remain bereft of information that are crucial to them succeeding in the real world.

The truth remains that there are as many reasons people enter into medical school to study medicine as there are to choose whether or not to practice the profession following graduation. It is common to hear medical students give "passion for helping people or desire to save lives" as their reason for choosing to study medicine after secondary (high) school, and many indeed confess to have found themselves in medical school as a result of parental influences and pressures, while others just loved having the "Dr" title before their names. 

Continue READING HERE

Ebola Response On Track -WHO

Medic-ALL (19:12:2014) Via MedPage Today

The response to the Ebola epidemic is on track to meet U.N. targets, the World Health Organization said in a mildly optimistic midweek situation report.
By New Year's Day, the agency said, the three hardest-hit countries will likely have the capacity to isolate and treat all cases and to bury all Ebola victims "safely and with dignity."

Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone all now have more available beds than reported patients, the WHO said, although they are not distributed evenly and some regions still have "serious shortfalls." By the same token, each country has enough safe burial teams to handle all people known to have died from Ebola; however, some regions might lack enough capacity.

The U.N. goals are to have 100% of new patients under treatment by Jan. 1 and all known Ebola victims buried safely. Isolating patients breaks the chain of transmission, while safe burials -- avoiding unprotected contact with the highly infectious body of an Ebola victim -- avoid an important risk factor for new cases.
The agency also had a brighter picture of the incidence of cases, suggesting there are signs that the epidemic in Sierra Leone might be starting to slow -- even though the country reported 327 new confirmed cases in the week ending Dec. 14.
Most of the cases are in the western part of the country, with the capital, Freetown, accounting for 125 of the new cases. Teams began house-to-house searches in Freetown yesterday, seeking hidden Ebola patients, according to the BBC.
The searches are part of the so-called Western Area Surge, which aims to get Ebola patients into treatment and also to raise the number of available beds in the capital, the WHO said.

In Guinea, there has been no evident pattern in recent weeks, with the number of new confirmed cases each week fluctuating between 75 and 148. For the week ending Dec. 14, there were 76.
In Liberia, on the other hand, incidence is falling, with only six districts reporting new confirmed or probable cases in the week ending Dec. 14, although data are missing for much of the week.
The cumulative Ebola toll worldwide, to Dec. 14, is 18,603 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases in five affected countries (Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, and the U.S.) and three previously affected countries (Nigeria, Senegal, and Spain), the agency said.

The U.S. has not had a new Ebola case since Craig Spencer, MD, was reported to be be cured Nov. 9; the country can be declared free of the disease Sunday, which will be 42 days after Spencer tested negative.
Mali also appears to have controlled the disease; all of the contacts of the country's eight confirmed and probable Ebola patients (six of whom died) have now passed the 21-day incubation period without developing the disease.


The last patient tested negative for the disease Dec. 6.

The WHO also reported, for the first time, population-based Ebola rates for Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone:

In Guinea, there have been 22 reported cases and 14 deaths per 100,000 people, with a cumulative total of 2,416 cases and 1,525 fatalities.

Liberia has had 197 reported cases and 83 deaths per 100,000 population, with a total of 7,790 cases and 3,290 deaths.

And Sierra Leone has had 145 cases and 36 deaths per 100,000 people, for a total of 8,356 cases and 2085 deaths.

Meanwhile, researchers are reporting that laboratory tests show that 53 existing and approved drugs have the effect of blocking ebolavirus entry to target cells.

The list includes a wide range of drug classes: microtubule inhibitors, estrogen receptor modulators, antihistamines, antipsychotics, pump/channel antagonists, anticancer drugs, and antibiotics, according to Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, PhD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and colleagues.
But more experiments will be needed to understand how useful any of the compounds might be, Garcia-Sastre and colleagues cautioned in Emerging Microbes and Infections.

The work is a positive step, commented Ben Neuman, PhD, of England's University of Reading, who was not part of the study.
The research "extends the list of drugs that are safe to use in people, and have been shown to interfere with Ebola in the lab," he said. But, he added, "it takes a lot to stop Ebola and none of the drugs identified in this study has been shown to protect an experimental animal yet."

"We now have a longer list of things that might work, but the list of things that definitely will work still unfortunately stands at zero," Neuman said.
Indeed, there is little evidence of efficacy even for the drugs that have been used experimentally during this current outbreak, according to the European Medicines Agency, which is conducting a continuing review of them.

The agency is looking at such medicines as brincidofovir, favipiravir, TKM-100802, and ZMapp -- all used to treat one or more patients -- but there is nothing to be said so far about their efficacy, according to an interim report.
"Treatments for patients infected with the Ebola virus are still in early stages of development," an agency spokesman said in a statement. "We encourage developers to generate more information on the use of these medicines in the treatment of Ebola patients."

Ref: World Health Organization
Photo Credits
Medpage today
in.pharmatechnologists.com
seattletimes.com