The Beginning Of The Plague?

Doctors’ offices across Central New York are packed with sick patients and ‘What’s Going Around’ might surprise you. It’s not influenza - at least not yet. More than 500 people were treated before 4 p.m. Monday and the phones were still ringing off the hook Tuesday at CNY Family Care in East Syracuse. Amanda Carelli made a visit after coming down with a fever and sore throat. Turns out she’s far from alone. “We are being inundated with phone calls for sinus infectious, bronchitis, infection of the stomach, bacterial infections, viral infections,” Family Physician Dr. Louis Bonavita said. While the spread of the stomach bug and respiratory infections aren’t anything new at this time of year, the sheer number of people getting sick is different. It may have to do with Central New York’s mild winter, especially when it comes to sinus infections. Snow and cold usually keep mold and fungus in check. “That may inflame people's sinuses via allergy symptoms. Then, you get a secondary viral or bacterial infection,” Dr. Bonavita said. If you do get sick, follow Amanda’s lead and take a day off. Other advice for preventing the spread of illnesses includes hand washing, using hand sanitizer and coughing into your arm, not your hand. CNY Family Care just had its first patient admitted to the hospital because of the flu. Doctors encourage flu shots, as they expects influenza to pick up over the next two weeks. NewsChannel 9 also spoke with Dr. Robert Dracker Tuesday. He says it's hard to determine if the flu may be holding off because of the mild weather. He says it could also be due to the fact that more people are getting immunized. Dr. Dracker adds it’s been the mildest flu season he’s seen in a very long time and when that happens, people tend to see respiratory illnesses fill the void.

Click to expand...

MUMBAI: Tuberculosis, which kills around 1,000 people a day in India, has acquired a deadlier edge. A new entity-ominously called Totally Drug-Resistant TB (TDR-TB )-has been isolated in the fluid samples of 12 TB patients in the past three months alone at Hinduja Hospital at Mahim . The hospital's laboratory has been certified by the World Health Organization (WHO) to test TB patients for drug resistance.

While Iran first reported TDRTB cases three years ago, India seems to be only the second country to report this deadly form of the disease. TDR-TB is the result of the latest mutation of the bacilli after Multi-Drug-Resistant TB (MDR-TB ) and Extremely Drug-Resistant TB (XDR-TB ) were diagnozed earlier.

Even more worryingly for Mumbai, 10 of the 12 TDR-TB cases are from the city, while the other two are patients from Ratnagiri and UP. One of the 12 patients has since died. India sees around 3- 4 lakh deaths for all forms of TB each year, while the world saw 1.7 million deaths in 2009.

As the full form of TDR-TB suggests, none of the known TB combination drugs work on the patient. All 12 showed resistance to 12 drugs. "The TB bacilli have obviously mutated. The emergence of TDR-TB has grave implications for public health," said Hinduja Hospital's Dr Zarir Udwadia, whose observations have been published in the latest issue of the US-based Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID) peer review journal. His team started isolating TDR-TB cases among patients with pulmonary TB in October 2011.

[...]

From the emergence of Multi-Drug-Resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB ) in 1992 to the arrival of Extremely Drug-Resistant TB (XDR-TB ) a few years ago, the TB bacilli have now reached a totally resistant form. The new, deadlier form is Totally Drug-Resistant TB (TDR-TB ). "A hundred years ago, TB patients were sent to the sanatorium for treatment. With the emergence of these various drug-resistant strains, we have come full circle to the idea for sanatoria. We have little to offer these patients except for drastic surgery and medication for some relief,'' said Dr Zarir Udwadia, of Hinduja Hospital , Mahim. His team's observations have been published in the latest issue of the USbased Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID) peer review journal.

Click to expand...

Kampala: A mystery disease has killed over 100 people and infected more than 2,000 in northern Uganda. The disease, first reported in September 2009, has since been dubbed "nodding disease" as it leaves its victims nodding, Xinhua reported.

Spread over the region`s five districts, the disease is characterised by head nodding, mental retardation and stunted growth and affects children and young adults. It causes young children and adolescents to nod violently while eating.

Scientists are to launch a series of investigations as the previous efforts couldn`t identify the disease`s cause.

The two previous samples and tests carried out by Centres for Disease Control (CDC) scientists in Atlanta in the US failed to identify the cause of the disease, said Richard Nduhura, minister of state for health in charge of general duties.

A team of scientists from the ministry of health, World Health Organisation (WHO) and CDC is going to carry out new tests, said Nduhura, who is leading a fact finding mission in the affected areas.

Click to expand...

A disease borne by the floods that had killed hundreds here and in Iligan City last Dec. 17 is killing people who had survived the disaster that struck the two cities at the height of Tropical Storm “Sendong.”

At least 15 people are now dead because of leptospirosis and 200 others are stricken ill and taken to hospitals.

Authorities said the rising death toll from leptospirosis could be due to the failure of survivors to take the antibiotics that had been distributed to them immediately after the Dec. 17 deluge.

As of Thursday, 15 people had been confirmed dead due to leptospirosis [eight from this city and seven from Iligan City] while more than 200 others had contracted the disease caused by the bacteria leptospira.

Its prevalence in flooded areas is often blamed on infected rats although other animals, like dogs and cats, could also become carriers.

Click to expand...

Laura said:

With a weakened population (weakened due to poor diet) more people will get sick and more sick people means more mutations in the pathogens. This might get interesting.

Click to expand...

BACTERIA that can resist nearly all antibiotics have been found in Antarctic seawater.

Björn Olsen of Uppsala University in Sweden and colleagues took seawater samples between 10 and 300 metres away from Chile's Antarctic research stations, Bernardo O'Higgins, Arturo Prat and Fildes Bay. A quarter of the samples of Escherichia coli bacteria carried genes that made an enzyme called ESBL, which can destroy penicillin, cephalosporins and related antibiotics (Applied and Environmental Microbiology, DOI: 10.1128/AEM.07320-11).

Bacteria with these genes can be even more dangerous than the better known superbug MRSA. That's because the genes sit on a mobile chunk of DNA that can be acquired by many species of bacteria, increasing the incidence of drug-resistant infections such as the E. coli outbreak last year in Germany.

[...]

Recent work shows the bacteria may hang on to the genes for CTX-M even when no longer exposed to antibiotics, suggesting that superbugs can survive in the wild, with animals acting as a reservoir. Penguins near the Chilean stations have been checked and are free of ESBL, though Olsen is now looking at the area's gulls as he has found ESBL-producing bugs in gulls in France.

"If these genes are in Antarctica, it's an indication of how far this [problem] has gone," he says.

Click to expand...

[...]

Some bacteria can produce helpful antibiotics, and they seem to produce more in space than on Earth--as much as 200% more according to mid-1990 space shuttle experiments sponsored by pharmaceutical company Bristol-Meyers Squib and partner BioServ Space Technologies.

Click to expand...

Left: A test tube full of bacterial colonies grown onboard the space shuttle ("0-g") alongside a matched ground control ("1-g"). Production of the antibiotic Monorden was 200% greater in the 0-g test tube. [more]

"These changes are a result of altered genetic expression," says Nickerson. Somehow weightlessness signals the genes of these microbes, commanding them to do things differently. In Salmonella, for instance, 163 genes (out of about 4600 total) changed their levels of expression--becoming more or less active than usual--inside the bioreactor. "The affected genes covered the full range of cell function: metabolism, structure, movement, virulence factors. You name it."

Researchers are only beginning to understand these sweeping changes. Are some microbes more sensitive to space travel than others? Which genes are most altered? And how does this affect people?
[...]

Click to expand...

https://www.sott.net/articles/show/228189-New-Light-on-the-Black-Death-The-Viral-and-Cosmic-Connection

What we do know is that a more virulent form of smallpox came to the fore in the 1630s and, just as the Black Death disappeared from the stage of history, smallpox took its place as the most feared of human diseases. We can only speculate. Smallpox virus, as opposed to the causative agent of the Black death, is very resistant to cold temperatures, making it a more viable virus. According to the data collected by Scott and Duncan which describe the disease process of the Black Death, hemorrhagic smallpox is almost virtually identical to the Black Death.

Click to expand...

Cancer drugs could halt Ebola virus

_http://news.yahoo.com/cancer-drugs-could-halt-ebola-virus-192125074.html

Some cancer drugs used to treat patients with leukemia may also help stop the Ebola virus and give the body time to control the infection before it turns deadly, US researchers said on Wednesday.

The much-feared Ebola virus emerged in Africa in the 1970s and can incite a hemorrhagic fever which causes a person to bleed to death in up to 90 percent of cases.

While rare, the Ebola virus is considered a potential weapon for bioterrorists because it is so highly contagious, so lethal and has no standard treatment.

But a pair of well-known drugs that have been used to treat leukemia -- known as nolitinib and imatinib -- appear to have some success in stopping the virus from replicating in human cells.

Lead researcher Mayra Garcia of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and colleagues reported their finding in Wednesday's edition of the journal Science Translational Medicine.

By experimenting with human embryonic kidney cells in a lab, they found that a protein called c-Abl1 tyrosine kinase was a key regulator in whether the Ebola virus could replicate or not.

The leukemia drugs work by stopping that protein's activity. In turn, a viral protein called VP40 stopped the release of viral particles from the infected cells, a process known as filovirus budding.

"Drugs that target filovirus budding would be expected to reduce the spread of infection, giving the immune system time to control the infection," the study authors wrote.

"Our results suggest that short-term administration of nilotinib or imatinib may be useful in treating Ebola virus infections."

Imatinib, which is marketed as Gleevec and Glivec, is used to treat chronic myelogenous leukemia in humans, a disease which is caused by dysregulation of c-Abl enzyme.

Nilotinib, also known as Tasigna, has been used in chronic myelogenous leukemia patients who are resistant to imatinib.

Both "have reasonable safety profiles, although some cardiac toxicity has been reported with long-term administration in a small number of patients," the study added.

According to the UN's World Health Organization (WHO), about 1,850 cases of Ebola, with some 1,200 deaths, have occurred since 1976.

The virus has a natural reservoir in several species of African fruit bat. Gorillas and other non-human primates are also susceptible to the disease.

Click to expand...

In research published in the May 12 issue of Physical Review Letters, Albert J. Libchaber, head of the Laboratory of Experimental Condensed Matter Physics, and his colleagues, including first author Carine Douarche, a postdoctoral associate in the lab, show that when oxygen penetrates a sample of oxygen-deprived Escherichia coli bacteria, they do something that no living community had been seen to do before: The bacteria accumulate and form a solitary propagating wave that moves with constant velocity and without changing shape. But while the front is moving, each bacterium in it isn’t moving at all.

“It’s like a soliton,” says Douarche. “A self-reinforcing solitary wave.” [...]

The effect, which lasted for more than 15 hours and covered a considerable distance (for bacteria), could not be explained by the expression of new proteins or by the addition of energy in the system. Instead, the creation of the front depends on the dispersion of the active bacteria and on the time it takes for oxygen-starved bacteria to completely stop moving, 15 minutes. The former allows the bacteria to propagate at a constant velocity, while the latter keeps the front from changing shape.

However, a propagating front of bacteria wasn’t all that was created. “To me, the biggest surprise was that the bacteria control the flow of oxygen in the regime,” says Libchaber. “There’s a propagating front of bacteria, but there is a propagating front of oxygen, too. And the bacteria, by absorbing the oxygen, control it very precisely.”

Oxygen, Libchaber explains, is one of the fastest-diffusing molecules, moving from regions of high concentration to low concentration such that the greater the distance it needs to travel, the faster it will diffuse there. But that is not what they observed. Rather, oxygen penetrated the chamber very slowly in a linear manner. Equal time, equal distance. “This pattern is not due to biology,” says Libchaber. “It has to do with the laws of physics. And it is organized in such an elegant way that the only thing it tells us is that we have a lot to learn from bacteria.”

Click to expand...

Found in a variety of aquatic environments, magnetic bacteria grow strings of microscopic magnetic particles called magnetosomes. When placed in a magnetic field, these make the bacteria align like tiny compass needles, a phenomenon call magnetotaxis.

[...]

Magnetic bacteria prefer to live far below the water's surface, where oxygen is scarce. In the past, scientists had suspected that being magnetic helps a bacterium find the oxygen concentrations it prefers more quickly by swimming only up and down relative to the Earth's magnetic field, rather than randomly in all directions.

Click to expand...