A Growing Family

The New York Times reports on the discovery of two new retroviral members of the H.T.L.V. family, kissing cousins to HIV.

The viruses, found in rural Cameroon among people who hunt monkeys and other primates, were probably transmitted from the animals through blood from bites and scratches received in hunting, butchering and keeping the primates as pets, the scientists said at the 12th Annual Retrovirus Conference, which ended here on Friday.

Polio in Ethiopia

The ongoing African polio epidemic has reached Ethiopia, with one confirmed case and another suspected, Reuters reports.. It all started in Nigeria:

Africa's polio epidemic erupted after a 10-month halt in immunization in Kano where Muslim elders said the vaccines were part of a Western plot to spread HIV and infertility, according to WHO officials. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, recorded 763 cases in 2004, accounting for 2/3 of the toll. It resumed immunization in July 2004.

Cryogenic Bacteria

The Environment News Service reports on frozen microbes: they weren't infectious, but bacteria unearthed from the Alaskan tundra five years ago came to life in the lab after 32,000 years at -4° Celsius. It's taken the past five years to prove that it's a new species.

Commenters at Slashdot note that bacteria have been revived after 25 million years.

Rabies Roundup

Just a few interesting rabies stories from ProMED-mail: two patients died of rabies transmitted by organ transplants in Germany, a hunter died of rabies in Siberia, and a woman was bitten by a rabid coyote right here in Massachusetts.

Bird Flu Warnings

The front-page story in the Boston Metro today was this AP report on the "very high threat" of a bird flu epidemic.

Julie L. Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said scientists expect a flu virus that has swept through chickens and other poultry in Asia to genetically change into a flu that can be transmitted from person to person.

Pneumonic Plague

Thanks to another unnamed source for the pneumonic plague link. I also heard about it at the plague panel at Boskone this weekend, but I haven't had a chance to blog it until now. The outbreak among diamond miners in the Congo has been going on since December, but the WHO has only recently gotten involved. According to the BBC article, there are at least 60 dead and 350 infected.

Don't Eat the Apes

Via ProMED-mail, of course: Study links Ebola outbreaks to animal carcasses.

Specifically, the researchers found that Ebola infections in wild animals such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and occasionally duikers (a diminutive antelope species), move across the human-wildlife divide through hunters taking either sick animals or carcasses for meat. Hunters can then spread the disease to families and hospital workers, creating the conditions for an epidemic in the process.

Mad Goat

I've gotten behind on reporting, but I did get a friendly tip on the mad goat [ProMED] last week.

Britain said on Tuesday [8 Feb 2005] that a goat confirmed as having the brain-wasting disease scrapie in 1990 may have had mad cow disease. [...]
In January 2005 mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), was found in a goat in France, the 1st time the brain-wasting affliction that ravaged European cattle herds and killed at least 100 people had been diagnosed in another animal.

Stuffed Plague

What's the perfect gift for the plague-blogger who has everything? Giant Microbes! Thanks to my personal Epidemic Santa for the Black Death and company.

The Bard and the Pox

Steve Baragona of the Infectious Diseases Society of America argues against a recent article in Did Shakespeare have Syphilis?

Quahogs vs. Botulin

The Associated Press reports that quahogs are surprisingly resistant to botulism:

Researchers who injected the clams with enough botulism toxin to kill 1,000 people found the shellfish somehow neutralized the enzyme, which is considered a potential bioterror agent.

Tularemia (Lab Exposure)

The dirty bomb scare here in Boston is distracting from another bit of terrorism-related news: three researchers at BU were infected with tularemia in, apparently, at least two separate lab accidents. The cases, which have been attributed to violations of safety procedures, were discovered by November but were concealed from the public during hearings about BU's planned high-security bioterrorism research lab.

These are not the people I want juggling vials of smallpox in South Boston.

Unprepared

A bioterrorism preparedness exercise shows that we're unprepared for smallpox.

Tsunami Tetanus

Tetanus has taken health care workers in Indonesia by surprise, according to this report from Banda Aceh.

Tsunami-borne Measles

I wasn't expecting measles to be the first flashy disease of the tsunami-set, but as usual, ProMED-mail has set me straight. Both Indonesia and India report cases.

Scanning for Schizophrenia

The Scotland Sunday Times reports on a new method to detect schizophrenia up to three years before onset.

Researchers at Edinburgh University believe their test — which measures IQ, memory, motor skills and verbal learning — can be used to take action against the illness, which typically strikes people aged between 17 and 30, from being triggered.

Hepatitis C Outbreak in Maryland

Via ProMED-mail: The Baltimore Sun reports a nosocomial outbreak of hepatitis C caused, strangely enough, by a contaminated batch of technetium-99m, a radioactive isotope used in diagnostic procedures.

The one fatality so far is a healthy 79-year-old man who went to a cardiology clinic in October and died at Christmas. Health officials are unsure how the isotope became so contaminated that all patients who received it have tested positive for hepatitis C, but they do believe the contamination took place at the pharmacy that prepared the isotope, rather than the cardiology clinic.

Mad Cow II

More weekend news: a second Canadian mad cow leads to concern about the lifting of the US ban on Canadian cattle imports.

Tsunami Disease Outbreaks

Via ProMED-mail: The WHO reported on Sunday that communicable diseases were being seen in tsunami refugee camps.

Acute Eosinophilic Pneumonia

From HealthDay News via MedicineNet: Government Studies Rare Pneumonia Outbreak Among Iraq Troops.

[...] acute eosinophilic pneumonia (AEP), is so rare that the entire medical literature contains only about 150 published accounts of it, according to lead study author Dr. Andrew F. Shorr, chief of the pulmonary clinic at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. And none of that literature has accounts of the disease striking in clusters, as it apparently did in Iraq.
There seems to be no explanation for the unusual cluster, which included two deaths, except for one salient fact -- all of the patients were smokers, and nearly all of them were new to the habit.