{"id":13261,"date":"2016-03-17T08:51:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T13:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=13261"},"modified":"2016-03-17T08:51:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-17T13:51:22","slug":"health-warnings-a-mysterious-bacterial-disease-is-killing-people-in-wisconsin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/17\/health-warnings-a-mysterious-bacterial-disease-is-killing-people-in-wisconsin\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Warnings: A Mysterious Bacterial Disease Is Killing People in Wisconsin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pathogenic<\/p>\n

SINCE NOVEMBER, 54\u00a0PEOPLE <\/span>in Wisconsin have one by one\u00a0fallen ill<\/a> with an obscure kind of bacteria called\u00a0Elizabethkingia<\/em>. Fifteen have died from the infection.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Elizabethkingia<\/em> is common in the environment\u2014in soil, in water\u2014but it rarely gets people sick. Cases pop up in ones and twos, usually in people with weak immune systems, says Michael Bell, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s healthcare quality division. \u201cThe fact that we\u2019re seeing more than four dozen cases, that is a very large outbreak.\u201d In fact, an outbreak of this size forElizabethkingia<\/em>, named for the bacteriologist who first isolated it in the 1950s, is unprecedented. The bacteria infects the blood, causing fever, chills, and shortness of breath.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on? It\u2019s a mystery for the CDC\u2019s disease detectives, a corps of about 70 doctors and epidemiologists who specialize in tracing outbreaks, from foodborne illnesses to Ebola. Wisconsin\u2019s public health department contacted the CDC for help in February, and the federal agency now have team of\u00a0seven people on the ground in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

At first, the CDC suspected the tap water. Just this January, the CDC\u2019s emerging diseases journal published a report<\/a>about a nearly two-year long\u00a0Elizabethkingia<\/em>\u00a0outbreak in a London critical care unit that ended up originating with contaminated taps in hospital sinks. But the tap water in Wisconsin turned up negative for the bacteria.<\/p>\n

Adding to the mystery, this outbreak doesn\u2019t match the pattern of other infections, which appeared in clusters in the same facility. Most of\u00a0Wisconsin\u00a0patients were elderly; some lived in nursing homes and others\u00a0had gone to the hospital, but they lived across 12\u00a0different counties. At the same time, the genetic signature of the bacteria points to a single source. The infection seems, to use the language of epidemiology, to be community-acquired. This makes tracing a source more difficult: The CDC\u2019s officials can\u2019t just order up medical records from a single hospital and test the area exhaustively.<\/p>\n

So the disease detectives have fanned out across the state, knocking on doors of patients. The CDC\u2019s staff asks questions, filling in the blanks with\u00a0samples of\u00a0personal care products like\u00a0lotions or wipes that might harbor the bacteria.\u00a0The freshest cases take precedence. \u201cWith older cases,\u201d says Bell, \u201cyou\u2019re dealing with materials already discarded and memories already faded.\u201d<\/p>\n

The questions they ask are methodical and standardized. For example, if you want to ask if someone has eaten lettuce, \u201cmost people will just think of salad,\u201d says Bell. So instead, the CDC might ask if you got lettuce or a sandwich with lettuce. \u201cWhen you point it out, it can jog their memory. You make sure that everyone gets a consistent shake answering the questions,\u201d says Bell. And like good scientists, they talk to a control group of people who live in the same communities but have not gotten sick. Then they start\u00a0crossing off hypotheses. A 10\u00a0hour day on the road might end with several more hours of data entry.<\/p>\n

At this point, CDC is still investigating water\u2014though other sources like water used on produce, which requires tracing it back to grocery stores or farms. \u201cThe amount of potential exposure sources is very large,\u201d Bell says.<\/p>\n

The outbreak is still going on, but Bell sees some hope\u00a0in the numbers. Elizabethkingia<\/em> is resistant to some but not all antibiotics, and the number of deaths has held steady as doctors have learned how to treat the once-obscure bacteria. Wisconsin may be seeing a new bacterial threat, but at least the CDC is learning how to handle it.<\/p>\n

Read the Original Article at Wired<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SINCE NOVEMBER, 54\u00a0PEOPLE in Wisconsin have one by one\u00a0fallen ill with an obscure kind of bacteria called\u00a0Elizabethkingia. Fifteen have died from the infection. Elizabethkingia is common in the environment\u2014in soil, in water\u2014but it rarely gets people sick. Cases pop up in ones and twos, usually in people with weak immune systems, says Michael Bell, deputy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[74,4048],"tags":[10362,10363,10364,1805],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}