Tag Archive: NYU Langone Medical Center


A “nightmare” bacteria that is resistant to powerful antibiotics and kills half of those it infects has surfaced in nearly 200 U.S. hospitals and nursing homes : Federal health officials reported

Filed under: Diseases, Health, Health And Wellness Report, Medical Research, Pharmaceuticals — 7 Comments
March 5, 2013
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  • CRE germs kill up to half of patients who get bloodstream infections from themCRE germs kill up to half of patients who get bloodstream infections from them
  • Vutal Signsweb graphic4% & 18% – About 4% of the 4,000 US hospitals studied had at least one patient with a serious CRE infection during the first half of 2012. About 18% of the country’s 200 long-term acute care hospitals had one. This totals nearly 200 facilities with at least one CRE patient in six months.

    42 – One type of CRE infection has been reported in medical facilities in 42 states during the last 10 years.

    1 in 2 CRE germs kill up to half of patients who get bloodstream infections from them.

  • CDC staff show two plates growing bacteriaCDC staff show two plates growing bacteria in the presence of discs containing various antibiotics. The isolate on the left plate is susceptible to the antibiotics on the discs and is therefore unable to grow around the discs. The one on the right has a CRE that is resistant to all of the antibiotics tested and is able to grow near the disks.
  • CDC microbiologist, Kitty AndersonCDC microbiologist, Kitty Anderson, looks at a 96-well plate used for testing the ability of bacteria to growth in the presence of antibiotics.
  • CDC microbiologist, Kitty AndersonCDC microbiologist, Johannetsy Avillan, holds up a plate that demonstrates the modified Hodge test, which is used to identify resistance in bacteria known as Enterobacteriaceae. Bacteria that are resistant to carbapenems, considered “last resort” antibiotics, produce a distinctive clover-leaf shape.

 

New CDC Vital Signs: Lethal, Drug-resistant Bacteria Spreading in U.S. Healthcare Facilities

CDC News Room

Drug-resistant germs called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, are on the rise and have become more resistant to last-resort antibiotics during the past decade, according to a new CDC Vital Signs report.  These bacteria are causing more hospitalized patients to get infections that, in some cases, are impossible to treat.

CRE are lethal bacteria that pose a triple threat:

  • Resistance: CRE are resistant to all, or nearly all, the antibiotics we have – even our most powerful drugs of last-resort.
  • Death: CRE have high mortality rates – CRE germs kill 1 in 2 patients who get bloodstream infections from them.
  • Spread of disease:  CRE easily transfer their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria.  For example, carbapenem-resistant klebsiella can spread its drug-destroying weapons to a normal E. coli bacteria, which makes the E.coli resistant to antibiotics also. That could create a nightmare scenario since E. coli is the most common cause of urinary tract infections in healthy people.

Read Full Report  Here

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‘Nightmare’ Bacteria Spreading in U.S. Hospitals, Nursing Homes: CDC

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 4 percent of U.S. hospitals and 18 percent of nursing homes had treated at least one patient with the bacteria, called Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), within the first six months of 2012.

“CRE are nightmare bacteria. Our strongest antibiotics don’t work and patients are left with potentially untreatable infections,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a news release. “Doctors, hospital leaders and public health [officials] must work together now to implement the CDC’s ‘detect and protect’ strategy and stop these infections from spreading.”

“The good news,” Frieden added at an afternoon teleconference, “is we now have an opportunity to prevent its further spread.” But, he continued, “We only have a limited window of opportunity to stop this infection from spreading to the community and spreading to more organisms.”

CRE are in a family of more than 70 bacteria called enterobacteriaceae, including Klebsiella pneumoniae and E. coli, that normally live in the digestive system.

In recent years, some of these bacteria have become resistant to last-resort antibiotics known as carbapenems.

Although CRE bacteria are not yet found nationwide, they have increased fourfold within the United States in the past decade, with most cases reported in the Northeast.

Health officials said they’re concerned about the rapid spread of the bacteria, which can endanger the lives of patients and healthy people. For example, in the last 10 years, the CDC tracked one CRE from one health-care facility to similar facilities in 42 states.

One type of CRE, a resistant form of Klebsiella pneumoniae, has increased sevenfold in the past decade, according to the CDC’s March 5 Vital Signs report.

“To see bacteria that are resistant is worrisome, because this group of bacteria are very common,” said Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.

Most CRE infections to date have been in patients who had prolonged stays in hospitals, long-term facilities and nursing homes, the report said.

The bacteria kill up to half the patients whose bloodstream gets infected and are easily spread from patient to patient on the hands of health-care workers, the CDC said.

Moreover, CRE bacteria can transfer their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria of the same type.

This problem is the result of the overuse of antibiotics, Siegel said. “The more you use an antibiotic, the more resistance is going to emerge,” he said. “This is an indictment of the overuse of this class of antibiotic.”

 

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The Black Plague : Oregon man in his 50s with what experts suspect is plague. According to The Oregonian

Filed under: Diseases, Diseases, Medical Research, Plagues — 1 Comment
June 14, 2012

Plague Rare in U.S., Surfacing in More Affluent Areas

HealthDayBy Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter | HealthDay  

WEDNESDAY, June 13 (HealthDay News) — Although the plague is typically considered a remnant of the Middle Ages, when unsanitary conditions and rodent infestations prevailed amid the squalor of poverty, this rare but deadly disease appears to be spreading through wealthier communities in New Mexico, researchers report.

Why the plague is popping up in affluent neighborhoods isn’t completely clear, the experts added.

“Where human plague cases occur is linked to where people live and how people interact with their environment,” noted lead researcher Anna Schotthoefer, from the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation in Wisconsin. “These factors may change over time, necessitating periodic reassessments of the factors that put people at risk.”

This latest study confirms previous reports that living within or close to the natural environments that support plague is a risk factor for human plague, Schotthoefer said.

Plague is caused by a fast-moving bacteria, known as Yersinia pestis, that is spread through flea bites (bubonic plague) or through the air (pneumonic plague).

The new report comes on the heels of the hospitalization on June 8 of an Oregon man in his 50s with what experts suspect is plague. According to The Oregonian, the man got sick a few days after being bitten as he tried to get a mouse away from a stray cat. The cat died days later, the paper said, and the man remains in critical condition.

For the new study, published in the July issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, the researchers used U.S. Census Bureau data to pinpoint the location and socioeconomic status of plague patients.

About 11 cases of plague a year have occurred in the United States since 1976, with most cases found in New Mexico. Plague has also been reported in a handful of other states.

Although many cases were in areas where the habitat supports rodents and fleas, the researchers also found cases occurring in more upper-class neighborhoods. In the 1980s, most cases occurred where housing conditions were poor, but more recently cases have been reported in affluent areas of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the investigators found.

“The shift from poorer to more affluent regions of New Mexico was a surprise, and suggests that homeowners in these newly developed areas should be educated about the risks of plague,” Schotthoefer said.

Schotthoefer noted that these more affluent areas where plague occurred were regions where new housing developments had been built in habitats that support the wild reservoirs of plague, which include ground squirrels and woodrats.

Bubonic plague starts with painful swellings (buboes) of the lymph nodes, which appear in the armpits, legs, neck or groin. Buboes are at first a red color, then they turn a dark purple color, or black. Pneumonic plague starts by infecting the lungs. Other symptoms include a very high fever, delirium, vomiting, muscle pains, bleeding in the lungs and disorientation.

In the 14th century, a plague called the Black Death killed an estimated 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population. Victims died quickly, within days after being infected.

Infectious disease expert Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, said he doesn’t expect to see that kind of outbreak ever again.

“This is not a disease of the past, but you are never going to see a massive outbreak of plague in this country,” he said.

“We don’t have the public health problems we used to have and people would be quickly confined if there were ever a large number of cases,” Siegel explained.

Yet, it is not surprising to see plague in these more affluent areas, he noted.

“We know that plague only exists where you have wild animals, and once a reservoir of plague is already present it is likely to persist,” Siegel explained. “It isn’t only about squalor; it’s about where the reservoir is.”

However, if the disease is caught early it is treatable with antibiotics, Siegel added.

More information

For more information on plague, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

 

 

Black Death backtrack: Don’t blame the rats, the plague was ‘spread by PEOPLE’

By Claire Bates and Luke Salkeld

For centuries rats have been blamed for spreading the Black Death, helping to consign millions of people to an agonising death.
But, according to one archaeologist, the rodents are innocent. Instead, the blame for passing on the disease that wiped out a third of the population of Europe could lie with the victims themselves.
The Black Death is widely thought to have been an outbreak of bubonic plague caused by bacteria carried by fleas that lived on black rats. The rodents spread the plague from China to Europe and it hit Britain in 1348.

A man carries a child suffering from the plague in 1349Destroyer: A man carries a child suffering from the plague in 1349

However, according to historian Barney Sloane, the disease spread so quickly that the rats could not be to blame.

Dr Sloane said the increased spread of Black Death over the winter of 1348 coincided with a seasonal decrease in the number of both rats and fleas, which are susceptible to cold.

He also pointed out that rats are also killed by bubonic plague, but said there were no large deposits of rat bones from the 14th century.

The epidemic, which is reckoned to have claimed 75million lives worldwide, spread from person to person in crowded medieval cities, Dr Sloane said.

His findings even cast doubt on whether the Black Death was actually bubonic plague, and not something with similar symptoms.

gods punishmentgods punishment

Dr Sloane, formerly a field archaeologist at the Museum of London, said: ‘We ought to be finding great heaps of dead rats in all the waterfront sites but they aren’t there.

 

 

 

Human Plague — United States, 1993-1994

From 1944 through 1993, 362 cases of human plague were reported in the United States; approximately 90% of these occurred in four western states with endemic disease (Arizona, California, Colorado, and New Mexico) (1). During each successive decade of this period, the number of states reporting cases increased from three during 1944-1953 to 13 during 1984-1993 (Figure_1), indicating the spread of human plague infection eastward to areas where cases previously had not been reported. In 1993, health departments in four states reported 10 confirmed cases * of human plague to CDC; one case has been confirmed during 1994 **. This report summarizes information about the 11 cases of human plague reported during 1993-1994 and describes epidemiologic and epizootic trends of plague in the United States.

In 1993, the 10 confirmed cases of human plague were reported from New Mexico (six cases), Colorado (two), Texas (one), and Utah (one) (Table_1). Persons with plague infection were aged 22-96 years (median: 55.5 years); five were aged greater than or equal to 67 years. Six cases occurred among men. Five cases occurred during June-August, three during March-May, and two during September- November. Seven persons were exposed at their homesites, and one (a veterinarian) was exposed at work; exposure sites could not be determined for two cases. Seven cases were bubonic plague; two, primary septicemic; and one, primary pneumonic. Nine of the 10 patients recovered with antibiotic therapy; one patient died (Table_1).

 

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Man likely sickened by plague in critical condition in Bend

By Lynne Terry, The Oregonian

 

 

 

Bubonic plague bacteria.JPGRocky Mountain LaboratoriesAn electron micrograph depicts a mass of Yersinia pestis bacteria, which cause the plague. A man hospitalized in Bend is critically ill and is believed to have the disease which devastated Europe in the Middle Ages but is now rare.

A man hospitalized in Bend is likely suffering from the plague, marking the fifth case in Oregon since 1995.

The unidentified man, who is in his 50s, fell ill several days after being bitten while trying to get a mouse away from a stray cat. The man is now being treated at St. Charles Medical Center-Bend, where he was listed in critical condition on Tuesday.

“This can be a serious illness,” said Emilio DeBess,  Oregon’s public health veterinarian. “But it is treatable with antibiotics, and it’s also preventable.”

The Black Death raged through Europe during the Middle Ages, killing about a third of the population. Today, the disease is rare, but the bacteria have never disappeared.

The man, who lives in rural Crook County, was bitten Saturday, June 2. He developed a fever a few days later. By Friday, June 8, he was so sick that he checked himself into St. Charles Medical Center-Redmond. He was later transferred to the larger facility in Bend.

Karen Yeargain,  communicable disease coordinator with Crook County Health Department, said lab tests are being done to confirm whether the man has the plague, but she said he is suffering from classic symptoms.

 

 

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