Fungal Meningitis Outbreak Reaches 233 Cases, U.S. CDC Says

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-17/fungal-meningitis-outbreak-reaches-233-cases-u-s-cdc-says-1-.html

The fungal meningitis outbreak triggered by a contaminated medication for back pain has been linked to 16 deaths in the U.S. after Virginia authorities said today that a second patient had died in the state.

Earlier today, 233 illnesses has been reported in 15 states, killing 15 people, including one in Virginia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A second Virginia death connected to the outbreak was confirmed later, the state Department of Health said in a statement.

A steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, manufactured by New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts, is believed by authorities to have triggered the outbreak. About 14,000 people received shots of the drug, contaminated with a strain of fungus, that were sold by the compounding pharmacy to 75 hospitals and clinics in 23 states, U.S. health regulators have said. The pharmacy suspended operations two weeks ago and recalled 17,676 doses of the medicine used as an injection for back pain.

[Kookaburra]

1. You know I've had a nasty case of bursitis in my shoulder

and it's been holding on for weeks now. My doc wanted to give me a steroid shot to help it feel better, and I turned him down. Now, I am not one to suffer when there is pharmaceutical help available, but everything in me screamed NO when he suggested the steroid shot.
Now I'm glad I listened to myself for a change.

[SheilaT]

3. Although now that you know about this

particular thing, you can ask your doctor where he gets his steroids from.

I've had bursitis in my shoulder, and a steroid shot some fifteen years ago made it go away and it's never come back. Same thing happened to my mother at about the same age.

But the larger issue is this: how can we ever know that anything is safe? And this contaminated steroid brings up yet another issue: what if something far more widely used -- say flu vaccine -- were to be contaminated. It's probably not a good idea for everyone to give up all vaccinations because of this one case of contaminated steroids -- while the numbers involved seem large, compared to the population of over 300 million in this country it's really tiny -- there is a certain potential for even greater harm.

And Republicans think there should be less regulation everywhere. Too bad there wasn't some way of making sure all the contaminated steroid simply went to those who oppose regulations.