Jul 2, 2021 07:40 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 2, 2021 07:43 PM by C C.)
Dangerous tropical disease appears in 3 US states, and the CDC doesn't know how
https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-me...-know-how/
EXCERPTS: There’s a worrying medical mystery unfolding across the USA. In Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas, a rare and potentially fatal disease has left two people hospitalized – and one dead.
For many of us, the only place we’ve heard somebody say the word “melioidosis” is in a rerun of House, MD. There are two reasons for that: first of all, it’s rare outside of tropical or subtropical areas like Southeast Asia or northern Australia. And second of all, because melioidosis is exactly the kind of disease that would end up in front of a doctor like House – the symptoms are non-specific, it’s easily confused for other diseases like pneumonia or tuberculosis, and by the time a patient starts showing symptoms they already have up to a 50 percent chance of losing their lives to it.
In the three cases found by the CDC, there’s another mystery: how the patients contracted the infection in the first place. Burkholderia pseudomallei, the bacteria that causes melioidosis, can’t normally be passed from person to person and has never been found “wild” within the United States. However, none of the three patients have a recent history of leaving the country.
[...] The mortality rate of melioidosis has led the CDC to list it as a tier one select agent – the same ranking as Ebola and smallpox. This makes the concern that it could be used as a bioweapon a priority for the Department of Defense, who only this week awarded researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa a $3 million grant to fund the development of a vaccine against the disease.
But for now, the CDC says that the risk to the public is low. [...] “Genomic analysis of the strains suggests a common source, such as an imported product or animal,” the CDC warned. “However, that source has not been positively identified to date.” (MORE - details)
https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-me...-know-how/
EXCERPTS: There’s a worrying medical mystery unfolding across the USA. In Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas, a rare and potentially fatal disease has left two people hospitalized – and one dead.
For many of us, the only place we’ve heard somebody say the word “melioidosis” is in a rerun of House, MD. There are two reasons for that: first of all, it’s rare outside of tropical or subtropical areas like Southeast Asia or northern Australia. And second of all, because melioidosis is exactly the kind of disease that would end up in front of a doctor like House – the symptoms are non-specific, it’s easily confused for other diseases like pneumonia or tuberculosis, and by the time a patient starts showing symptoms they already have up to a 50 percent chance of losing their lives to it.
In the three cases found by the CDC, there’s another mystery: how the patients contracted the infection in the first place. Burkholderia pseudomallei, the bacteria that causes melioidosis, can’t normally be passed from person to person and has never been found “wild” within the United States. However, none of the three patients have a recent history of leaving the country.
[...] The mortality rate of melioidosis has led the CDC to list it as a tier one select agent – the same ranking as Ebola and smallpox. This makes the concern that it could be used as a bioweapon a priority for the Department of Defense, who only this week awarded researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa a $3 million grant to fund the development of a vaccine against the disease.
But for now, the CDC says that the risk to the public is low. [...] “Genomic analysis of the strains suggests a common source, such as an imported product or animal,” the CDC warned. “However, that source has not been positively identified to date.” (MORE - details)