Tag: shigella

Pandora Report 10.23.2015

by spopescu, posted in Pandora Report

Happy Infection Prevention Week! Make sure to give any infection preventionists you know a big hug or at least a hearty handshake (only clean hands though!). Not only do we get to celebrate National Infection Prevention week, but it’s also National Biosafety Stewardship Month, so get your party hand sanitizer ready to go and let the frivolity begin! Foodborne illness is the name of the game this week and we’ll be discussing outbreaks. Friendly reminder – the influenza vaccine is available in most offices/clinics now, so get your flu shot as there have already been cases springing up across the US. Fun fact – did you know that a report published this week identified Yersinia pestis in the tooth of a Bronze Age individual, which means there were plague infected humans 3,300 years earlier than we thought!

National Biosafety Stewardship Month – October is National Biosafety Stewardship Month (thanks NIH!) to celebrate and encourage people to focus on biosafety policies, practices, and procedures. Given the lab biosafety issues we’ve seen recently, I think we can all safely (or should I say, “biosafely”?) agree that a little extra attention to these issues and the promotion of better practices is a great thing. Institutions are encouraged to use more of a just culture approach to incident reporting and to promote public transparency. Happy National Biosafety Stewardship Month!

Water Quality for the Olympic Games in Rio De Janeiro, 2016
The 2016 Summer Olympics are fast approaching and with any large event, health issues become a main concern. The WHO is providing technical advice to the Brazilian national authorities regarding public health concerns, as well as to the International Olympic Committee and the Local Organizing Committee. Clean drinking water, sewage pollution, and a host of other health issues can become a nightmare during such a large-scale event. While there aren’t recommendations for specific viral testing of the water, the WHO does encourage additional testing in the event of an outbreak. Sanitary inspections and other preventative procedures are being recommended to avoid outbreaks and public health issues. As we get closer to the 2016 Olympics, it is very likely concerns over vector-borne diseases will be addressed through vector control and public health education.

CDC Launches Redesigned FOOD Tool for Foodborne Outbreaks 

Courtesy of CDC FOOD Tool
Courtesy of CDC FOOD Tool

The CDC has updated their online foodborne illness outbreak investigation tool! The Foodborne Outbreak Online Database Tool (FOOD Tool) allows the user to search the outbreak database by state, food, ingredient, year, location of food preparation, and organism. The FOOD Tool also provides the case information related to the outbreak, so users can see the number of affected persons, hospitalizations, deaths and laboratory-confirmed organisms. This database pulls from CDC’s Foodborne Disease Outbreak Surveillance System (FDOSS) and allows users to not only look at data and trends over time, but also compare their cases to other outbreaks.

Syrian Refugee Resettlement and Why We Should Be Letting Them All In 
Dr. Trevor Thrall, one of our amazing GMU Biodefense professors, has written a piece for The Atlantic on the importance and benefits of taking in all Syrian refugees. Dr. Thrall discusses the limitations of addressing the root cause of the Syrian conflict and how the US and its European allies should take in refugees. Discussing the military alternatives to the Syrian crisis, he states, “going in militarily is not the answer, then. Instead, those civilians under threat should get out. Refugees typically receive support in the countries to which they flee, but the vast numbers involved in this case threaten to overwhelm Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon, which have so far accommodated the vast majority of the outflow.” Dr. Thrall points out that while resettlement would cost a substantial amount of money, it would cost far less than military intervention and you simply can not ignore the moral superiority in aiding refugees.

Chipotle’s Bad Tomatoes Came From Nation’s Largest Field Producer
To our readers in Minnesota, did you happen to eat at a Chipotle in August? If so, we hope you weren’t one of the affected individuals that contracted Salmonella Newport as a result of contaminated tomatoes. The Minnesota Department of Health investigated the 64 cases resulting from this outbreak, however it was just released that the contaminated tomatoes were actually supplied by Six L’s Packing Co (doing business as Lipman Produce), which is actually one of the largest tomato suppliers in the US. Packing 15 million boxes of tomatoes this past year, Lipman was later dropped as a supplier by Chipotle after learning of the source of contaminated produce. The tomatoes were removed but it’s estimated that during the window of exposure, roughly 560,000 people consumed Chipotle. The good news is that we’re out of the incubation period, so if you happened to eat at a Minnesota Chipotle, you’re in the clear.

Stories You May Have Missed:

  • 80 Illnesses Linked to Shigella Outbreak; CA Seafood Restaurant Closed –  Mariscos San Juan in San Jose, CA is currently closed after the Santa Clara County Health Department connected a recent outbreak of Shigella to their food. While the exact source hasn’t been identified, over 93 people were sickened in relation to contaminated food at the restaurant.
  • Subway to Phase Out Poultry Products Raised With Antibiotics–  On Tuesday, Subway Restaurants announced that they will be transitioning to only serve poultry products that have been raised without antibiotics by early next year. Other chain restaurants, like Chick-fil-A and Chipotle, are jumping on the train to phase out chicken and turkey products that were raised with antibiotics.
  • Scottish Nurse and Ebola Complications – Pauline Cafferkey continues to battle post-Ebola complications. Reports last week noted neurological issues and it was recently reported that she has meningitis after the virus persisted in her brain and CSF after her initial recovery. Ongoing research is looking into the long-term effects of the disease as the West African outbreak was the largest in history and researchers have never had the opportunity to look at chronic issues associated with disease recovery.

Pandora Report 4.5.15

by juliadhomstad, posted in Pandora Report

I love when the stories find me, so we’ve got some big ones this week including the nuclear deal with Iran and the arrival of multi-drug resistant Shigella in the United States. We’ve also got an Ebola update and other stories you may have missed.

Enjoy your (Easter) Sunday, have a great week and see you back here next weekend!

An Iran Nuclear Deal Built on Coffee, All-Nighters and Compromise

For months—many, many, months—there has been discussion of potential for Iranian nuclear weapons and what the U.S. planned to do about it. This week, those questions were finally answered as a nuclear agreement between American and Iranian officials was reached in Lausanne, Switzerland.

New York Times—“The agreement calls for Tehran to slash its stockpile of nuclear materials and severely limit its enrichment activities, theoretically bringing the time it would take to produce a nuclear weapon to a year — a significant rollback from the current estimate of two to three months.

Both sides made significant compromises. For the United States, that meant accepting that Iran would retain its nuclear infrastructure in some shrunken form. For Iran, it meant severe limits on its production facilities and submitting to what Mr. Obama has called the most intrusive inspections regime in history.”

Drug-Resistant Food Poisoning Lands in the U.S.

Before I travelled to China in 2012, my doctor prescribed me ciprofloxacin. It was, in his opinion, almost guaranteed I would come into contact with some sort of bacteria that would result in the dreaded “travel tummy.” Now, Cipro-resistant Shigella (a bacterial infection of the intestines) is becoming a growing problem in Asia and around the world. Over the past year, the resistant strain has shown up in 32 U.S. states and was linked with international travel to India, the Dominican Republic, and Morocco. However, in many instances, people who got sick hadn’t travelled outside the U.S. meaning the strain has already started to circulate unrelated to international travel. This could be a real problem.

NPR—“‘If rates of resistance become this high, in more places, we’ll have very few options left for treating Shigella with antibiotics by mouth,” says epidemiologist Anna Bowen, who led the study. Then doctors will have to resort to IV antibiotics.

Shigella is incredibly contagious. It spreads through contaminated food and water. “As few as 10 germs can cause an infection,” Bowen says. “That’s much less than some other diarrhea-causing germs.’”

This Week in Ebola

It’s been awhile since we’ve had an Ebola update, which should mostly be interpreted as a good sign. And there are good signs, like the two experimental trials of Ebola vaccine candidates have proven to be both safe and effective. However, during a three-day countrywide shutdown in Sierra Leone, 10 new cases of Ebola were found. The good news is that there were not hundreds of hidden cases, as some feared, and the Head of Sierra Leone’s Ebola Response has said the small figures indicate that the country is now at the “tail end” of the epidemic. If things are going relatively well in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Ebola still remains entrenched in Guinea. This week Guinea closed its border with Sierra Leone as an effort to stamp out the virus. Even those who aren’t sick, or have recovered, must still deal with the after effects of the disease. This week, the Liberian government recommended that all Ebola survivors practice “safe sex indefinitely” until more information can be collected on the length of time the virus may remain present in bodily fluids. All these stories should serve as a reminder that even though Ebola may not be as present in the news, the disease is still affecting people around the world.

Stories You May Have Missed

Image Credit: Zeynel Cebeci