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Deadly Drug-Resistant Fungus Is 'Quietly Spreading Across the Globe' (msn.com)
A drug-resistant fungus called Candida auris "is quietly spreading across the globe," reports the New York Times:
Over the last five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical center to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa. Recently C. auris reached New York, New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to add it to a list of germs deemed "urgent threats...."
In the United States, two million people contract resistant infections annually, and 23,000 die from them, according to the official CDC estimate. That number was based on 2010 figures; more recent estimates from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine put the death toll at 162,000. Worldwide fatalities from resistant infections are estimated at 700,000.... With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs.
Even the CDC, under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. State governments have in many cases declined to publicly share information beyond acknowledging that they have had cases.... [A] hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients -- or prospective ones.
The Times reports that C. auris targets people with weakened immune systems (including babies and the elderly) -- and that 587 cases of C. auris have already been reported in the U.S., according to the CDC: 309 cases in New York, 104 in New Jersey, and 144 in Illinois. The CDC adds that half the patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days.
It also survived in a room treated for an entire week with aerosolized hydrogen peroxide, according to the Times. "Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines."
The New York Post adds that "Given the speed at which the inspection spreads, coupled with its resistance to medication, 'the prospect of an endemic or epidemic multidrug-resistant yeast in U.S. healthcare facilities is troubling,' the CDC said in October."
In the United States, two million people contract resistant infections annually, and 23,000 die from them, according to the official CDC estimate. That number was based on 2010 figures; more recent estimates from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine put the death toll at 162,000. Worldwide fatalities from resistant infections are estimated at 700,000.... With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs.
Even the CDC, under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. State governments have in many cases declined to publicly share information beyond acknowledging that they have had cases.... [A] hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients -- or prospective ones.
The Times reports that C. auris targets people with weakened immune systems (including babies and the elderly) -- and that 587 cases of C. auris have already been reported in the U.S., according to the CDC: 309 cases in New York, 104 in New Jersey, and 144 in Illinois. The CDC adds that half the patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days.
It also survived in a room treated for an entire week with aerosolized hydrogen peroxide, according to the Times. "Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines."
The New York Post adds that "Given the speed at which the inspection spreads, coupled with its resistance to medication, 'the prospect of an endemic or epidemic multidrug-resistant yeast in U.S. healthcare facilities is troubling,' the CDC said in October."
Hydrogen peroxide isn’t exactly a strong cleanin agent for something that can naturally occur in your body. Maybe look for something a little more deadly
We might have a fighting chance against resistant bugs if pharmas did fundamental research on possible cures. But they're much happier putting out endless low-risk, high profit margin respins on aspiring, paracetamol , ibuprofen or prozac.
Also, they don't have much incentive to create one-off cures. That's why we still don't have an AIDS vaccine or an affordable cure for malaria. Selling litetime drugs is a much more attractive business proposition.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Ah yes, the good old naturalist anti-science post.
I've got news for dumbasses like you. Vaccines are not like antibiotics or other antimicrobals.
If you grow a culture of bacteria or fungi in your petri dish and put an appropriate antimicrobal into it, like antibiotics or antifungals, they will kill the cultures.
If you grow a culture of bacteria or fungi or have viruses in your petri dish and you put an appropriate vaccine into there nothing of consequence happens.
Why? This is because vaccines work fundamentally different. For vaccines to work a functioning immune system is required in the first place. Only then a vaccine can work by given the immune system an example of a pathogen to prepare against for future encounters. That's the point of vaccines, they improve the immune system.
In the end it'll just be a global case of pathogen whack-a-mole as more and more diseases become resistent to the ever shrinking amount of medicines we have to combat them. When you're talking about fungi, bacteria and viruses that can evolve resistance faster than we can create new drugs to combat them the end game is obvious. Of course in the case of bacteria it could be slowed by farmers not force feeding antibiotics to livestock whether they need it or not.
I have no idea what the solution is , if there is one, but I suspect in 50 years time the days of taking pills to cure infection may well be over.
So how is holism going to save us ?
The three things you mention, we've been doing less in the recent past, compared to "many thousands of years". Doesn't seem to be helping.
Science is a method. You're conflating science with technology. They're not the same thing. And very few who understand the scientific method worship it blindly as a god in the same way as the religious worship their gods.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Third, and please try to keep up here, we don't allow psychopathic individuals or organizations to make or enforce policies.
Surely you are joking? As far as I can see, the system prevents everyone *except* psychopathic individuals and organizations from making policies.
Just think of any corporate CxOs you know about, or any senior political leaders.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
A what point will people admit that intercontinental travel and trade pose serious ecological risks and really need to be better controled.
Also: At what point (if any) will we be able to discuss the disease spreading issues of lax border security, without being shut down as "racist hate-mongers" by SJWs?
The open southern border of the US has now been implicated in the reintroduction of, at least:
- Measles
- Drug resistant Tuberculosis
- Virulent Newcastle Disease
and I could go on.
VND is a serious, highly-contagous, viral disease of birds, particularly chickens. (It does occasionally hop to humans, causing eye irritation and/or mild fever, but doesn't propagate.) It has been introduced into the US over the southern border at least three times, apparently in smuggled fighting cocks each time.
Currently the only solution, once it gets loose in an area, is to kill ALL the chickens in all the flocks, and perform major sterilization on the facilities to wipe out the rather robust virii. (This tends to put egg farmers out of business, because they are paid for the birds themselves, but not the lost egg production from then until the next year, which is as soon as they can get replacement birds.)
The second time this got loose in California, the state went from the #1 to the #6 egg producer. It's still over a billion-dollar industry so expect similar draconian measures to protect as much of it as possible this time around.
The third introduction was just a few months back. It's been found in several sites in the LA are, in a showbird in Utah, and a single bird brought to a vet in Redwood City (by someone who moved the bird several times and is NOT cooperating in identifying the movement history of the birtd, or the locations of his other birds). Then (after a couple weeks) an additional outbreak showed up in Arazona.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way