Monday, December 31, 2012

Norovirus — infection causes severe, sometimes projectile, vomiting and diarrhea --

One coud depart from Darwin to say that this virus has an intelligence of its own, purposely improving itself to evade human detection and prevention.  It incubates only briefly, and when ready to jump out from host to human host, it likes to make you vomit like a firefighter's hose — long streams in a trajectory like a projectile.  You can also pass it on from hand to hand, but if you don't, and it doesn't find a host immediately, it can lay dormant undetected on a rug, say, rather invisible until someone stirs it up with a vacuum cleaner perhaps.  Or it sticks to your shoes, until you remove them with your hands, or someone else moves them for you. But then, your hands?  It can remain alive 12 days on fabrics and carpets.  It can last alive for up to 6 months in still water.  In reproducing itself, norovirus is in a hurry so that it makes mistakes, one coud surmise instead that it is programmed to make mistakes in copying its own genetic template into the DNA of its "offspring" cells — this mechanism contributes powerfully to its ablity to change its DNA scheme rapidly and creates obstacles to finding any permanent killer and cleaner, in the form of an anti-virus.  It also means that commercial advanced drug companies have a money-maker in just keeping up with the predatory changes somewhat effectively.  But, hey, watch out for the invisible buggie in them thar' laboratories while you're trying to keep up with the lastest wizardry of the norovirus.

— Albert Gedraitis



Norovirus examined on robot "Larry" to test the trajectile of vomiting as scientists stand by and watch simulation of disease that is taking more and more lives annually




Paramedics dressed in protective attire walk in front of the ship, Bellriva, in Wiesbaden, Germany, December 8, 2012.  The Bellriva has been quarantined after at least 30 passengers were found to be suffering from vomiting and diarrhea.  Authorities believe it was caused by the Norovirus, a virus that is spread from person-to-person and causes flu-like symptoms.


Reuters (Dec31,2k12)

by Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent

LONDON | Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:53am EST

Yet their lack of concern for Larry is made up for by their intense interest in how far splashes of his vomit can fly, and how effectively they evade attempts to clean them up.

Larry is a "humanoid simulated vomiting system" designed to help scientists analyze contagion. And like millions around the world right now, he's struggling with norovirus - a disease one British expert describes as "the Ferrari of the virus world".

"Norovirus is one of the most infectious viruses of man," said Ian Goodfellow, a professor of virology at the department of pathology at Britain's University of Cambridge, who has been studying noroviruses for 10 years.

"It takes fewer than 20 virus particles to infect someone. So each droplet of vomit or gram of feces from an infected person can contain enough virus to infect more than 100,000 people."

Norovirus is hitting hard this year - and earlier too.

In Britain so far this season, more than a million people are thought to have suffered the violent vomiting and diarrhea it can bring. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said this high rate of infection relatively early in the winter mirrors trends seen in Japan and Europe.

"In Australia the norovirus season also peaks during the winter, but this season it has gone on longer than usual and they are seeing cases into their summer," it said in a statement.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say norovirus causes 21 million illnesses annually. Of those who get the virus, some 70,000 require hospitalization and around 800 die each year.

PROFUSE AND PROJECTILE

Norovirus dates back more than 40 years and takes its name from the U.S. city of Norwalk, Ohio, where there was an outbreak of acute gastroenteritis in school children in November 1968.

Symptoms include a sudden onset of vomiting, which can be projectile, and diarrhea, which may be profuse and watery. Some victims also suffer fevers, headaches and stomach cramps.

John Harris, an expert on the virus at Britain's HPA, puts it simply: "Norovirus is very contagious and very unpleasant."

What makes this such a formidable enemy is its ability to evade death from cleaning and to survive long periods outside a human host. Scientists have found norovirus can remain alive and well for 12 hours on hard surfaces and up to 12 days on contaminated fabrics such as carpets and upholstery. In still water, it can survive for months, maybe even years.

At the Health and Safety Laboratory in Derbyshire, northern England, where researcher Catherine Makison developed the humanoid simulated vomiting system and nicknamed him "Vomiting Larry", scientists analyzing his reach found that small droplets of sick can spread over three meters.

"The dramatic nature of the vomiting episodes produces a lot of aerosolized vomit, much of which is invisible to the naked eye," Goodfellow told Reuters.

Larry's projections were easy to spot because he had been primed with a "vomitus substitute", scientists explain, which included a fluorescent marker to help distinguish even small splashes - but they would not be at all easily visible under standard white hospital lighting.

Add the fact that norovirus is particularly resistant to normal household disinfectants and even alcohol hand gels, and it's little wonder the sickness wreaks such havoc in hospitals, schools, nursing homes, cruise ships and hotels.

During the two weeks up to December 23, there were 70 hospital outbreaks of norovirus reported in Britain, and last week a cruise ship that sails between New York and Britain's Southampton docked in the Caribbean with about 200 people on board suffering suspected norovirus.

MOVING TARGET

The good news, for some, is that not everyone appears to be equally susceptible to norovirus infection. According to Goodfellow, around 20 percent of Europeans have a mutation in a gene called FUT2 that makes them resistant.

For the rest the only likely good news will have to wait for the results of trials of a potential norovirus vaccine developed by U.S. drugmaker LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals Inc, or from one of several research teams around the world working on possible new antiviral drugs to treat the infection.

Early tests in 2011 indicated that around half of people vaccinated with the experimental shot, now owned by Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co, were protected from symptomatic norovirus infection.

The bad news, virologists say, is that the virus changes constantly, making it a moving target for drug developers. There is also evidence that humans' immune response to infection is short-lived, so people can become re-infected by the same virus within just a year or two.

"There are many strains, and the virus changes very rapidly - it undergoes something virologists call genetic drift," Harris said in a telephone interview. "When it makes copies of itself, it makes mistakes in those copies - so each time you encounter the virus you may be encountering a slightly different one."

This means that even if a vaccine were to be fully developed - still a big 'if' - it would probably need to be tweaked and repeated in a slightly different formula each year to prevent people getting sick.

Until any effective drugs or vaccines are developed, experts reckon that like the common cold, norovirus will be an unwelcome guest for many winters to come. Their advice is to stay away from anyone with the virus, and use soap and water liberally.

"One of the reasons norovirus spreads so fast is that the majority of people don't wash their hands for long enough," said Goodfellow. "We'd suggest people count to 15 while washing their hands and ensure their hands are dried completely."

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Will Waterman)


Sunday, December 30, 2012

Highly infectious disease results from drinking camel cocktail of milk and a mixer

Sometimes religion, folklore, and "alternative medicine" get mixed together in very unhealthy ways.  In the news story below, "hadith" refers to Muslim writings outside the Qu'ran, that some Muslims consider also sacred, others reject entirely except as folkloric because they do attribute sayings to the Prophet Mohamed.  Strongly pro-hadith Qu'ranic scholars, however, use these writings as primary legal documents to make rulings under Sharia law.   In Turkey, fortunately, a prominent former cleric now a member of Parliament, Ishan Ozkes, says that attribution of hadith status to the folkloric idea is incorrect.

Let's hope here's one item of folklore that will not become a fad.

— Albert Gedraitis




Hurriyet Daily News, Istanbul (Dec30,2k12)


Turkish men hospitalized after drinking camel's milk, urine

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet

Hürriyet photo
Hürriyet photo
Two Turkish men were hospitalized on arrival to Turkey after drinking camel's milk and urine while on an umrah visit, daily Hürriyet reported. 
 
The men believed the camel's milk and urine to be good for health, claiming it was written in a hadith. An imam, according to the Turkish men, also drank the milk and urine with them. 
 
The visitors were hospitalized due to high fever and unusual levels of liver enzymes. Further tests revealed that the two men had been infected with the "alkhurma" virus, reportedly catching the virus from the milk.  
 
The alkhurma virus is very dangerous and highly contagious and has a fatality rate of 25 to 35 percent, daily Hürriyet reported. 
 
Ä°hsan Özkes, a retired religious cleric and current member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), denied the existence of any hadith that would encourage people to drink camel's milk and urine.
 
"Those who did drink it must have been ignorant," he said.


April/19/2012

Monday, December 17, 2012

Red spots on your legs? A doctor zeroes-in on Schamburg's Disease — it's not a sham, and not a bad hamburger!

In Orlando, Florida, The Sentinel newspaper runs a regular column, "Ask Lake Doctors,"  and a recent article there attracted my attention.  The article seems to have been around for a long time — since 1999, so we don't know whether it's really uptodate, but it carries the answering doctor's reply to a question by a 40-years old woman (she's older now for sure!).  What attracted my attention was a condition I have on my legs, due to diabetes (I'm 72 now).  Actually, I had never even heard of Schamberg's Disease, so I thawt I'd check out the article, and then I decided to pass it on to all of our readers of Christian Medical Observations & Ruminations.  I don't practice medicine, of course, so I'm not offering advice; and if the thawts of Dr Richard Bosshardt (an MD, I presume) sounds valuable to you, check his remarks with your own family doctor — as a matter of fact, always consult your family doctor before taking any advice you get online.  Oh, one other thing, if the look of the spots troubles you, don't hold back from doing something about that problem.  Because it has become a problem to you.  It's okay to do something with your doctor's advice, even tho it's "just cosmetic."  You need to feel comfortable with how you look, lower legs too.  If you're obsessing about your looks, you probably need to see a shrink.  The path of constant cosmetic surgeries is pathological.  Get help.

— Albert Gedraitis


Orlando Sentinel (Dec17,2k12)


Schamburg's Disease Causes Red Spots On The Legs


by Dr. Richard Bosshardt, Special to The Orlando Sentinel
November 3, 1999

Question: 
I am a woman in my 40s who recently developed red spots on my legs. These began to spread and now cover most of my legs. They do not itch or hurt but are very unsightly.
I went to a dermatologist who told me I have something called Schamburg's disease and there is not much that can be done for it.

Answer: 
Schamburg's disease is one of several progressive, pigmented purpuric dermatoses. This sounds like a mouthful, but all it means is a skin disorder characterized by the developement of red or purple spots that may become progressively worse with time.
Purpura are small colored spots on the skin caused by collections of red blood cells. These can be caused by any trauma that ruptures the tiny capillaries beneath the skin. They also can be caused by conditions in which the capillaries become unusually fragile or leaky.
A deficiency in the normal clotting factors in the blood can lead to spontaneous bleeding, or bleeding with minimal trauma [minimal external cause]. Purpura can be distinguished from discoloration caused by enlarged or dilated capillaries under the skin by a simple test.
If one takes a glass microscope slide and presses it over the spot, the spot will blanch and disappear if the blood is in a vessel because the pressure squeezes the blood out of that area of the vessel. With purpura, since the blood cells are not in a vessel, the spots will not blanch.
The cause of Schamburg's disease is not known. It is more common in older patients and is only infrequently seen in patients younger than 40. It seems to be seen more often in people who are on their feet a lot. This is probably because blood pressure in the tiny skin capillaries is highest in the legs because of the effect of gravity on the tissues.
The disease does not appear to be caused by trauma, although once the condition is present, trauma to the skin may cause more spots to form.
The underlying problem seems to be one of an inflammation of the tiny skin capillaries. If a biopsy of the skin is taken, the capillaries look more bent and twisted than normal.
This may affect blood flow through them as the red blood cells try to pass through the tortuous channels. The inflammation of the vessels also makes them ``leaky,'' allowing red blood cells to pass through them into the surrounding tissues.
The course of Schamburg's varies. But typically the spots arise without any apparent cause, spread and increase in number for a period of several weeks and then begin to fade away.
This process may take four to six weeks. The spots usually remain in the lower legs below the knees, but in more severe cases they can extend up the legs and onto the lower torso. The fading of the spots is a result of the absorption of the blood cells by the tissues over time.
Unfortunately, as the spots fade, they may leave a brown pigmentation in the skin.
Red blood cells are red because of the hemoglobin pigment inside them. When hemoglobin is oxygenated, it is bright red, which is why arterial blood - which carries oxygen to the tissues - is bright red.
Hemoglobin is an iron pigment, and when red blood cells break down and are absorbed, the iron pigment can remain behind and stain the skin a brown color. This can happen from any condition in which bleeding into the skin occurs, such as a bruise. This brown color in the skin usually fades. But that can take a year or more, and sometimes it never fades away completely.
There is no known consistently effective treatment for Schamburg's. Vitamin C, about 1,000 mg per day orally, has been beneficial in some people in stabilizing the process.
We know that people with vitamin C deficiency are prone to bleed spontaneously. Because it seems to be an inflammatory process, steroids, which are the most potent anti-inflammatory agents we have, may help.
During the early phase of the disease, when new lesions are forming, a short course of high-dose oral steroids may help.
These are usually given for seven days on a tapering schedule, with the highest dose taken the first day and lower and lower doses taken on subsequent days.
Topical steroids have been used, too. The most effective ones are the stronger prescription formulations, such as Lidex and Halog.
When hyperpigmentation occurs from the brown iron pigment, creams containing chemicals known as hydroquinones can be tried. These are skin lighteners sometimes used for post-inflammatory skin pigmentation, such as from acne, and pigmentation that sometimes occurs with pregnancy and birth-control pills.
Unfortunately, the pigment from purpura tends to be found in the deeper levels of skin, and the hydroquinones are less effective for these.
One final way to try to eliminate brown areas is with the use of a specific laser, the pulsed dye laser, which may selectively target the pigment deposits without damaging the overlying skin.
In the presence of purpura without an obvious cause, it is worth considering having a skin biopsy and hemotologic work-up to be sure some other cause of the spots is not at work. You might ask your dermatologist about this.
If you are on medications, check to see that these do not affect bleeding. Let your doctor know if you are on any herbal remedies or supplements.


Sunday, December 16, 2012

Corporations sometimes have a big stake in overcoming specific diseases, like malaria worldwide

Some good news from the corporate social responsiblity network is always welcome.  This time the good news is from South Africa and is about companies that are pitching in to help conquer malaria among its workers and their communities.  So the concern here is not simply one of a give-away; it has longterm favourable consequences on the health of the companies' workforces.  The text is pretty much a press release in which the companies toot their own horn.  But, hecks, that's okay too.

— Albert Gedraitis

CSRwire (Dec17,2k12)


Companies Make Progress 


Fighting Malaria


GBCHealth Releases New Study Highlighting Best Practices

Submitted by:GBCHealth
Posted:Oct 10, 2012 – 06:00 AM EST
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Oct. 10 /CSRwire/ - GBCHealth released a study today that compares a wide range of corporate-run malaria programs and identifies key characteristics that the best programs share. The report found that the most successful malaria programs were managed by highly-skilled teams of specialists, received strong support, advocacy and resources from corporate management and delivered healthcare services directly.
GBCHealth launched the report, Leading Practice in Malaria Control, with Sentinel Consulting, which conducted the study and analyzed data from 18 programs run by 10 companies. The programs spanned Africa, Asia and South America. Rio Tinto, a mining company with malaria control programs, commissioned the report.
The report was launched in Johannesburg at GBCHealth’s Oct. 9-12 conferenceThe Road to Malaria Elimination 2020: Investment and Beyond, which features some of the world’s top-malaria experts, senior African government leaders and companies working to combat malaria among their employees and communities. Economic losses due to malaria amount to $12 billion a year in Africa due to lost productivity, absenteeism, premature deaths, medical costs and other factors.
“There’s no ‘one size fits all’ among corporate malaria programs,” said Pam Bolton, Vice President, Membership and Advisory Services at GBCHealth.  “But the best programs share common features.  This report is intended to help companies implement successful malaria control programs.”
"We interviewed company malaria program managers operating in diverse and challenging situations around the world,” said Naomi Roberts, Lead Consultant for Sentinel Consulting. “The passion, drive and effectiveness that we found underlies the key role the private sector plays in ongoing efforts to combat this deadly disease."
The survey compared corporate malaria programs across businesses and regions to identify what works best. The most successful programs, regardless of their setting, size or budget, showed common features. They include:
  • The company justifies investments in the malaria program as an expression of corporate social responsibility, not just a means to improve workforce operations and productivity.
  • Malaria program managers are given a narrow focus, limited to malaria or vector-borne or infectious diseases, rather than comprehensive health or safety.
  • The company delivers healthcare services directly rather than via referral.  The use of company health facilities can assure accurate diagnosis and treatment and enable a company to assess awareness levels, record case numbers and provide follow up.
  • Highly-skilled specialists manage the programs and have access to physicians and entomologists [bug scientists — malaria is mosquito-borne] for advice and support.
  • Program managers receive strong support, advocacy and resources from their corporate medical directors.
  • Beginning at an early stage of development, the programs establish strong communication and collaboration both inside and outside the company, ranging from reaching employees and their families to consulting with government officials.
  • A company that provides resources to keep staff and their families healthy, “earns the right,” in the eyes of the community it cares for, to influence and change health behaviors.
Read the report here.
Please visit GBCHealth.org.
About GBCHealth
GBCHealth represents over 200 private sector companies leading the business fight for improved global health. Through work that includes developing comprehensive workplace policies; supporting community programs; leveraging core competencies; facilitating leadership and advocacy by business leaders; and brokering public-private partnerships, GBCHealth helps members achieve their global health goals. GBCHealth manages the private sector delegation to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, serving as an entry-point for corporate collaboration and engagement with the Fund and its recipients worldwide. It also manages the Corporate Alliance on Malaria in Africa. GBCHealth has offices in New York, Johannesburg, Beijing, Nairobi and Moscow. For more information on GBCHealth, please visit www.gbchealth.org
About Sentinel Consulting
Sentinel Consulting provides practical solutions for people operating in remote areas. Our expertise is in health, safety and logistics. We have two complimentary business streams – our operational expertise and experience ensure that our research and consultancy is firmly rooted to the ground. We provide clear, sustainable solutions that work. www.sentinelconsulting.co.uk
For more information, please contact:
Eve Heyn Communications Manager
Phone: 212.584.1651
Phone 2: 646.358.6237
Fax: 212.584.1699
For more from this organization:
GBCHealth