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Deadly Drug-Resistant Fungus Sparks Outbreaks In UK (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More than 200 patients in more than 55 UK hospitals were discovered by healthcare workers to be infected or colonized by the multi-drug resistant fungus Candida auris, a globally emerging yeast pathogen that has experts nervous. Three of the hospitals experienced large outbreaks, which as of Monday were all declared officially over by health authorities there. No deaths have been reported since the fungus was first detected in the country in 2013, but 27 affected patients have developed blood infections, which can be life-threatening. And about a quarter of the more than 200 cases were clinical infections. Officials in the UK aimed to assuage fear of the fungus and assure patients that hospitals were safe. "Our enhanced surveillance shows a low risk to patients in healthcare settings. Most cases detected have not shown symptoms or developed an infection as a result of the fungus," Dr Colin Brown, of Public Health England's national infection service, told the BBC.
Yet, public health experts are uneasy about the rapid emergence and level of drug resistance the pathogen is showing. In a surveillance update in July, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that C. auris "presents a serious global health threat." It was first identified in the ear of a patient in Japan in 2009. Since then, it has spread swiftly, showing up in more than a dozen countries, including the U.S., according to the CDC. So far, health officials have reported around 100 infections in nine U.S. states and more than 100 other cases where the fungus was detected but wasn't causing an infection.
Yet, public health experts are uneasy about the rapid emergence and level of drug resistance the pathogen is showing. In a surveillance update in July, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that C. auris "presents a serious global health threat." It was first identified in the ear of a patient in Japan in 2009. Since then, it has spread swiftly, showing up in more than a dozen countries, including the U.S., according to the CDC. So far, health officials have reported around 100 infections in nine U.S. states and more than 100 other cases where the fungus was detected but wasn't causing an infection.
US fear of socialised medicine makes them believe paying more than twice as much for the same outcomes with millions of people denied access is actually "superior".
I suppose you're one of those people who think words mean things.
USA
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
The National Institutes of Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Plus all of the different insurance companies, hospitals, etc etc etc
More than 200 patients in more than 55 UK hospitals were discovered by healthcare workers to be infected or colonized by the multi-drug resistant fungus Candida auris,
Should we blame the government, or blame society? Should we blame the images on TV?
No! Blame Candida... blame Candida..
I was in a motorcycle accident and no one asked for insurance info until after my third surgery. Too many people overstate how bad the US has if wrt medical care.
Try having an illness instead. See how that works out.
No sig today...
Not a doctor, but there is only a little overlap between antibiotics and antifungal medications. This stuff is resistant to Diflucan (I'm not trying to spell the generic name correctly right now), which is often handed out with much less oversight than antibiotics. Any bio-female could probably get a few doses for a yeast infection without seeing their doctor; calling in and asking is all most require since it is a common ailment.
The problem is that many primary care doctors have been told that C. albicans (the common human strain) can not become resistant. I was told the same, only to be corrected by a very indignant Tropical and Infectious Disease specialist who had seen that first line drug become useless in a few cases.
But this doesn't mean we need to panic and shut down Madagascar. There are other classes of drugs, like the old standby nystatin, and other families of antifungal medications in the larger azole drug category. This should be treatable if caught early. The danger is that drugs like nystatin can not be absorbed so they only treat dermal or gastric infections, while amphotericin B (same class) does kidney damage at the effective dose. So someone who has a systemic infection is going to only have treatments available that cause as much damage as they are trying to prevent. And hospital acquired infections can become systemic very quickly.
The good news is that we've finally halted global warming! The bad news is that the Earth now hungers for the flesh of man. :-/
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I'm waiting for west nile to return. Maybe in 20 years.
Well thats ironic, because people die every year from west nile. 84 in 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's a drug resistant variant of a deadly fungus we've seen before. There have been no deaths from this outbreak, but that doesn't change that the fungus is deadly.
At some point in every Ebola outbreak, there are sick people but no deaths. We still know that Ebola is deadly at that time.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Difficult to parse, yes, but what I believe he meant is that he got a lot of care in the US, while in a socialist country he would have been left to die. That has not been my experience, FWIW, but that's what he meant.
As a long-term athlete's foot patient, I've been under the impression that the anti-fungal drugs haven't worked very well for a very long time...
The U.S. is the best health care in the world ...for about the richest 2% of the population.
For the rest of us, it's so bad that we have shorter adult lifespans and higher infant mortality rates.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Use potassium permanganate. Just buy some of the powder off ebay (whatever size you buy will last the rest of your life). Put a small amount in some warm water. When I say small amount, I mean small. Like the amount that you can get on the end of a house key. You want enough water to cover your feet, and enough potassium permanganate to dye the water a light pink. If it's purple, you used too much. If it's dark, you went way, way too far. Anyway, you can also add some epsom salt to the water. Make sure it's nice and warm, and soak your feet for a half-hour every couple of days until it clears up. Trust me, it will. In order for it to work, you'll need to treat your shoes with boric acid (again, ebay. Get a big bag.). A good dusting is all you need. Also, wash your socks in hot water, and keep your socks on around the house. Bleach your shower and bathroom floor daily. It's all easy stuff. Follow the protocol and your athlete's foot will be gone.
A fine effort to instantly derail the thread.
Here in the UK we've had quite enough of that already.
That comment and the parent are complete lies and such obvious lies I'm surprised anyone went with it.
In the NHS you get care for as long as you need it, free of charge if you're a UK citizen*. It almost certainly will cost a lot less than in the US largely because the NHS is more efficient than a million doctors, hospitals, insurers and drug companies all spending on advertising and sending bills to each other and all extracting profits from the patients.
It's not all great. Because recent governments have introduced the private sector into the NHS, the kind of shortcuts (do the minimum the contract requires - charge fees for everything else), incompetence (get rid of lots of staff, specially the more experienced, hire some new cheap not-as-good ones) and fiddles (no-one ever checks so we'll make up the figures) which grow when profits are the main motive are creeping in there too.
* For those not poor, old or chronically ill, prescription medicines are £8.60 and dentistry costs a maximum of £244.30.
>That's the kind of problem we get when crybabies keep asking for antibiotics for being sad.
It might be kind of problem, but this specific problem isn't caused by antibiotics being overprescribed. Yeast are eukaryotes, antibiotics don't really work to begin with against them.
I was in a motorcycle accident and no one asked for insurance info...
This is where my story would have ended in my country. No "until" qualifier required.
There's big jugs of bleach in all grocery stores in Canada. What country do you live in that DOES NOT allow you to buy bleach?
#DeleteFacebook
Candida kills 12–24,000 people annually in the United States, officially. Unofficially, the number is almost certainly much higher, because most Candida deaths occur in the elderly and go unreported as "old age" or "natural causes" or "pneumonia".
The fact that this outbreak hasn't killed anyone yet is relatively unremarkable. It just means no one had a weak enough immune system to succumb to it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
My wife that was a nurse in the UK for 13 years said that in the UK, they would have just let me die.
You can't blame your marital problems on the NHS.
What a rotten party, have we run out of beer or something?
First, there have been no reported deaths from this infection as per the article, so how exactly is this deadly? Dangerous, potentially deadly? So, please, lets title these articles responsibly. The remainder of this post is not meant to bash the parent, just to define terms and clarify concepts. My opinion is at the end.
Not a doctor, but there is only a little overlap between antibiotics and antifungal medications.
The term antibiotic covers both anti-bacterial agents (e.g. penicillin) used against bacteria, and anti-fungals (e.g. fluconaole/Diflucan), and technically, they also refer to anti-virals (e.g. aciclovir), but in the most common use, antibiotics refer to antibacterials, and never to antivirals. There are no medications that treat both bacteria (prokaryotes [no nucleus]), fungus (eukaryotes [true nucleus]) simultaneously; yes, bleach (sodium hypochlorite) can destroy both, but internal use is discouraged [and as referenced in the wikipedia article, your body's neutrophils (a type of white blood cell - cells that fight infection) uses hypochlorous acid as an antimicrobial . So.....yes and no. [sorry that kept getting longer and longer]
This stuff is resistant to Diflucan (I'm not trying to spell the generic name correctly right now),
Flu con a zole - that's not too hard....Talimogene Laherparepvec...that's hard. :-)
which is often handed out with much less oversight than antibiotics.
Ummm, no. You can get pretty powerful topical antibiotics and topical antifungals over the counter. Fluconazole is an oral antifungal that still requires a prescription (at least in the US and other "responsible" countries).
Any bio-female could probably get a few doses for a yeast infection without seeing their doctor; calling in and asking is all most require since it is a common ailment.
It is a common ailment, but it is also a true infection that can be cultured and proven, and usually requires treatment. (I don't want you to poo-poo this aliment :-), pretty miserably for those afflicted), and unless there is a well established relationship between physician and patient, an exam is required (and strongly encouraged to rule out other more dangerous diagnoses).
The problem is that many primary care doctors have been told that C. albicans (the common human strain) can not become resistant. I was told the same, only to be corrected by a very indignant Tropical and Infectious Disease specialist who had seen that first line drug become useless in a few cases.
I see fluconazole resistant candida albicans frequently (reported 7% resistance rate), but I work at a tertiary care referral center, so YMMV. Never been under the illusion that it could not become resistant. Every organism (meaning microbial species) given enough time and opportunity can become resistant to just about anything.....The only thing that microbial organisms will never become resistant to is fire, well heat anyways (shout out to the the post below).
But this doesn't mean we need to panic and shut down Madagascar. There are other classes of drugs, like the old standby nystatin, and other families of antifungal medications in the larger azole drug category. This should be treatable if caught early. The danger is that drugs like nystatin can not be absorbed so
Use potassium permanganate. Just buy some of the powder off ebay (whatever size you buy will last the rest of your life). Put a small amount in some warm water. When I say small amount, I mean small. Like the amount that you can get on the end of a house key. You want enough water to cover your feet, and enough potassium permanganate to dye the water a light pink. If it's purple, you used too much. If it's dark, you went way, way too far. Anyway, you can also add some epsom salt to the water. Make sure it's nice and warm, and soak your feet for a half-hour every couple of days until it clears up. Trust me, it will. In order for it to work, you'll need to treat your shoes with boric acid (again, ebay. Get a big bag.). A good dusting is all you need. Also, wash your socks in hot water, and keep your socks on around the house. Bleach your shower and bathroom floor daily. It's all easy stuff. Follow the protocol and your athlete's foot will be gone.
This. Potassium permanganate. This was how we treat athlete's foot and most nail fungal infections back in my country of origin. Pretty safe to use when we follow the instructions. Same things with Borax or boric acid, bleach or hydrogen peroxide.
Hell, I suffered all my life of sinus infections till I started doing nasal rinses with a neti pot using a solution containing borax and diluted alkalol. Alkalol helps breaks mucus when/if I have a stuffy nose, but it is borax the thing that has eliminated whatever fungal/bacterial problems I had.
On remote areas, one way to deal with scabies (typically when in contact with an infected animal), we'd apply kerosene to the area. Painless and effective. We'd also give kerosene baths to dogs infected with scabies. Not the best thing to do to a family pet, but that was the first (and many times) course of action for people who could not afford make a trip to a vet.
HUNGRIES!
All the Gifts...
Try living in Sweden. I have 30km to the closes "first aid hut" and If I try to see a doctor I am given a time and when I show up I am told to f*ck off and try again later.
Have ya considered moving back to civilization?
In the USA, we don't have hospitals out in the wilderness either.
One great plus about "repeal and replace" - the Medicaid cuts would close many smaller hospitals serving smaller communities. Those who voted for the republicans just don't realize yet that they'd voted for the deaths of family members.
I hope they are in charge of spaghetti.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
None of that is true. Sorry about that - I suffer from mental health problems and am a compulsive liar. My therapist has told me I have to come clean when I catch myself lying. I'm actually from Springfield, New Jersey and live in my mom's basement.
I hope you can all forgive me.
Or perhaps they are just more selfless than you? Maybe what you are doing is what's called projection - 'I'm a selfish bastard therefore everyone else has selfish motives too'.