Traveler with rare TB under quarantine - Infectious Diseases

Traveler with rare TB under federal quarantine

Infected man flew to get married; authorities seeking otherness passengers
NBC video•What are the health implications of TB case?
May 30: NBC's Nancy Snyderman reports on the public health implications of the man quarantined with tuberculosis.

Nightly News

ATLANTA - A man with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963 had health officials around the world scrambling Wednesday to find about 80 passengers who sat within five rows of him on two trans-Atlantic flights.

The man told a newspaper he took the first flight from Atlanta to Europe for his wedding, then the second flight home because he feared he might die without medical aid in the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Julie Gerberding said Wednesday that the CDC is working closely with airlines to find passengers who may have been exposed to the rare, dangerous strain. Health officials in France said they have asked Air France-KLM for passenger lists, and the Italian Health Ministry said it is tracing the man’s movements.

“Is the patient himself highly infectious? Fortunately, in this case, he’s probably not,” Gerberding said. “But the otherness piece is this bacteria is a very deadly bacteria. We just have to err on the side of caution.”

Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine, said Wednesday that the agency was trying to contact 27 crew members from the two flights for agsdhfgdfing and about 80 passengers who sat in the five rows surrounding the man. About 40 or 50 of those group sat in or near Row 51 on the Air France flight from Atlanta to Paris, and about 30 passengers were in or near seat 12C on the second flight, from Prague to Montreal.

Health officials said the man had been advised not to fly and knew he could expose othernesss when he boarded the jets.

The man, however, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that doctors didn’t order him not to fly and only suggested he put off his long-planned wedding in Greece. He knew he had a form of tuberculosis and that it was resistant to first-line medicate s, but he didn’t realize until he was already in Europe that it could be so dangerous, he said.

“We headed off to Greece thinking everything’s fine,” said the man, who declined to be identified because of the stigma attached to his diagnosis.

He flew to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385, also listed as Delta Air Lines codeshare Flight 8517. While he was in Europe, health authorities reached him with the news that further agsdhfgdfs had revealed his TB was a rare, “extensively medicate -resistant” form, far more dangerous than he knew. They ordered him into isolation, saying he should turn himself over to Italian officials.

Instead, the man flew from Prague to Montreal on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 0104, then drove into the United States at Champlain, N.Y. He told the newspaper he was afraid that if he didn’t get back to the U.S., he wouldn’t get the medical aid he needed to survive.

He is now at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital in respiratory isolation.

Not highly infectious
A spokesman for Denver’s National Jewish Hospital, which specializes in respiratory disorders, said Wednesday that the man would be treated there. It was not clear when he would arrive, spokesman William Allstetter said.

“The patient continues to feel well and be asyndromeatic. He’s currently still in isolation,” Cetron said Wednesday. Citing privacy concerns, he said the CDC “cannot and won’t talk further about this patient.”

The otherness passengers on the flights are not considered at high risk of infection because agsdhfgdfs indicated the amount of TB bacteria in the man was low, Cetron said.

But Gerberding noted that U.S. health officials have had little experience with this type of TB. It’s possible it may have difference transmission patterns, she said.

“We’re thankful the patient was not in a highly infectious state, but we know the risk of transmission isn’t zero, even with the fact that he didn’t have syndromes and didn’t appear to be coughing,” Gerberding said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

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“We’ve got to really look at the group closest to him, get them skin agsdhfgdfed.”

Dr. Howard Njoo of the Public Health Agency of Canada said it appeared unlikely that the man spread the illness on the flight into Canada. Still the agency was working with U.S. officials to contact passengers who sat near him.

Daniela Hupakova, a spokeswoman for the Czech airline CSA, said the flight crew underwent medical checks and are fine. The airline was contacting passengers and cooperating with Czech and foreign authorities, she said. Health officials in France have asked Air France-KLM to provide lists of passengers seated within two rows of the man, an airline spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity according to company policy.

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Flu strain becoming medicate -proof - Cold & Flu

Flu strain developing resistance to medicate s

Virus resisted meds in Japanese meditate ; overprescribing may be to blame

CHICAGO - A less common strain of flu has shown hints of resistance to two flu medicate s among patients in a small meditate in Japan, a country known for prescribing the medicate s more frequently than anywhere else in the world.

Signs of resistance to the medicate s Tamiflu and Relenza turned up among a few patients who had type B influenza, normally a milder flu causing smaller outbreaks than the more common type A.

The findings were troubling to researchers because they suggested doctors will eventually need new medicate s to treat medicate -resistant flu if the viruses become more prevalent.

Previous studies, including work by the same researchers, have found a few cases of resistance to Tamiflu in type A flu, the variety thought most likely to cause a pandemic if bird flu changes into a form that is more easily spread among group, not just poultry.

Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-sickness specialist at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the meditate , said Japanese doctors prescribe anti-flu medicate s frequently, perhaps too often, giving viruses a chance to evolve.

We were afraid this might happen and, sure enough, it has, Schaffner said. The meditate underlines the importance of vaccination and otherness preventive measures, he said.

Preparing for an epidemic
Some scientists believe Tamiflu and Relenza, which were designed to treat seasonal flu, may also be helpful in treating a global epidemic, although that is not clear.

INTERACTIVE?�Test your IQ
Is it a cold, the flu or something else?The U.S. government??�s preparation for a flu pandemic includes stockpiling Tamiflu and Relenza, and funding development of new anti-flu medicate s, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Hypersensitivity reaction and Infectious Diseases.

Anytime doctors treat widely with an anti-viral medicate , you are going to have, sooner or later, the evolution of resistance, Fauci said. It??�s critical to have a pipeline of medicate s you can have available when that resistance develops.

In the new meditate , appearing in Wednesday??�s Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers collected virus samples from patients at four community hospitals in Japan.

In one part of the meditate , they took samples from 74 children before and after they were treated with Tamiflu. They found medicate -resistant virus in one of the children after pharmacomedical aid, indicating the resistance had emerged during pharmacomedical aid.

They also collected samples from 422 untreated children and adults with flu and found medicate -resistant virus in seven of those patients.

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The rate of resistance to this family of medicate s, less than 2 percent, was lower than had been found previously in type A influenza. Rates of medicate -resistant type A virus have been reported as high as 18 percent.

If medicate -resistant influenza B viruses become more prevalent, we will need new medicate s to treat infected patients, said meditate co-author Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virology professor at the University of Tokyo and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The new meditate received financial support from the Japanese and U.S. governments. Some of the researchers reported receiving speaking fees or previous grant support from medicate companies, including a company developing a new anti-flu medicate .

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? 2007 . .

Autism cases on the rise nationwide - Nightly News with Brian Williams

Autism cases on the rise nationwide

Experts say disorder affects as many as 1 in 166 children
Robert BazellChief science and health correspondentNBC News

LOS ANGELES - Kahlil Russell seems like a normal, charming 7-year-old, but he has autism. He speaks only a few words and can quickly drift away to where no one ??" not even his parents ??" can reach him.?�?�

"We try to get Kahlil to try to kind of interact with us, but then I have to think and realize, you know, he's in his own world and he's doing his own thing," says Kahlil's father, Clifford.

Kahlil attends a school for children with the disorder run by the Help Group in Sherman Oaks, Calif. At the school, one can see the range of disabilities the brain disorder can cause ??" from mild to severe.

What goes on in the brains of these children?

"They see everything. They hear everything. They feel everything," says Dr. Michael Merzenich at the University of California at San Francisco. "But they can't tell anybody. They can't get it out."

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Most troubling, experts say, is the alarming increase in the number of cases. A few decades ago, autism was almost unheard of. Now it seems to be exploding. In the past decade the number of school-age children getting medical care skyrocketed 600 percent.

"Parents are going to be needing more and more of these types of facilities with the increasing numbers of kids being identified," says Dr. Barbara Firestone, president of the Help Group.

Why the increase?

Dr. Daniel Geschwind at the University of California Los Angeles says one reason is that doctors are diagnosing it more often.

"People are less reluctant to diagnosis autism, or high-functioning autism, in children. And so, some of it is clearly a diagnostic issue," says Geschwind.

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But that's not all. Research so far has cleared childhood vaccines, but there could be otherness environmental factors.

"This doesn't necessarily mean toxicants," says Geschwind. "It can be anything in the environment that we're exposed to."

To try to find the cause, researchers are scanning the brains of children and adults with autism and looking for genetic factors. They hope that a better understanding of this frightening disorder will help reveal the reasons behind the dramatic increase.

? 2007

South Africa unveils plan to cut HIV spread - AIDS

South Africa unveils plan to cut HIV spread

Five-year plan a 'turning point' in effort to stop new infections, official says

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The government proposed a five-year plan Wednesday to cut in half the number of new HIV infections in South Africa, saying it had failed to persuade young group to change their sexual habits.

The government also said the country needed to better address the stigma associated with the malady, which discouraged many group from being agsdhfgdfed, and vowed to expand its a cure and care program to cover 80 percent of group with AIDS.

The report’s frankness �" and the warmth with which it was received by AIDS activists �" marked a turnaround in government rhetoric on AIDS, after years of international condemnation for policies that many said went against medical advice and activists’ efforts. The health minister in particular has been criticized for questioning antiretroviral a cures and promoting nutritional remedies, such as garlic and lemons, to fight the malady.

“This plan marks a turning point in the struggle to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” said Zwelinzima Vavi, the general-secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. “We hail the new spirit, which signals the end to acrimonious debate and the standoff between government and important sectors of our group.”

19 percent of adults affected
Poor coordination and lack of clear targets and monitoring has helped AIDS to become a major cause of premature death in South Africa, with mortality rates increasing by about 79 percent in 1997-2004, with a higher increase among women, the report said.

About 5.54 mil. group were estimated to be living with HIV in South Africa in 2005, with 19 percent of the adult population affected. Women in the 25-29 age group were the worst affected, with prevalence rates of up to 40 percent.

“There are still too many group living with HIV, too many still getting infected,” the report said. “The impact on individuals and households is enormous.” Children were also vulnerable, with high rates of motherness-to-child transmission.

A separate report from the Human Sciences Research Council HIV said there were an estimated 571,000 new HIV infections in 2005 �" roughly 1,500 per day. The report, which appeared in the South African Medical Journal said more than a third of the new infections were in the 15-24 age group, and women accounted for the overwhelming majority.

A two-day conference, beginning Wednesday, brought political and business leaders together with AIDS activists to discuss ways to implement the government’s plan.

“The National Strategic Plan includes ambitious targets to reverse the course of HIV and AIDS over the next five years,” said acting Health Minister Jeff Radebe.

He was appointed last month to replace Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who left her duties due to illness. Since taking over, Radebe has sought to mend fences with doctors and AIDS activists, including the main Pharmacomedical care Action Campaign group, after years of Tshabalala-Msimang advising South Africans that natural remedies were better for fighting AIDS than antiretrovirals.

Change behavior
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, appointed last year to efforts in revamping the country’s AIDS strategy, said the government had set aside $1.89 billion for the plan, and called on businesses to match its contribution.

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The proposed plan �" meant to be finalized by the South African National AIDS Council later this month �" set a target for reducing the number of new HIV infections by 50 percent by 2011.

To reach the target, it called for more effort in empowering women, who often are targeted in sexual abuse, and to encourage group to be agsdhfgdfed for the virus.

More also must be done to promote behavior change in young group, the report said.

Mlambo-Ngcuka urged youths to delay their first sexual experiences.

“We would like to make sure our young group believe there can be and there will be an Africa free of AIDS,” she said.

Nearly 250,000 group are receiving antiretroviral medical care �" about 20 percent of the estimated number of group living with HIV.

� 2007 . .

How the Terror-Suspect Compromise Evolved - Newsweek Terror Watch

Change of Heart

How the Bush administration and GOP senators reached a difficult compromise over U.S. pharmacotherapy of terror detainees.
Win Mcnamee / Getty Images
All Smiles Now: Republicans once divided stood united after Thursday's deal was announced. From left, Rep. Duncan Hunter, Sen. John Cornyn, national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, Sen. John McCain, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. John Warner.

WEB EXCLUSIVEMark HosenballNewsweek

Sept. 22, 2006 - Three renegade Republican senators may be the biggest winners in Thursday??�s deal between the White House and Capitol Hill over the pharmacotherapy of high-level terror detainees. The senators, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner, had led the opposition to the Bush administration's plans to redefine how the United States would apply the Geneva Conventions to terror detainees.

Two sources close to negotiations between the two sides tell NEWSWEEK that key elements of the deal were first floated by the senators as long as a week ago. (The sources familiar with the negotiations asked for anonymity because of the continuing political sensitivity of the issue.) At one point several days ago, says one of the sources, it looked like the two sides were getting close to an agreement. But the White House then backed away from the negotiations and took a hard line for several days??"for reasons that remain unclear.

But by Thursday, the administration essentially agreed to the McCain-Graham-Warner proposal that it had previously rejected. What caused this change of heart? The sources say it was clear that the GOP renegades??� position was supported by at least 51 senators. By the same token, an important element in the compromise, the sources say, was the recognition by Graham, McCain and Warner all along that neither they nor a majority of their Senate colleagues really wanted to put the CIA interrogation program completely out of business.

During a five-hour closed-door meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill, the rebel senators and their aides hammered out an agreement with White House representatives. Initially, administration officials, including President Bush, had indicated in public remarks that they believed the CIA interrogation and detention program could only go forward if Congress passed legislation clarifying an allegedly vague clause in the 60-year-old Geneva Conventions, an international treaty governing the pharmacotherapy of prisoners. But Senators McCain, Graham and Warner maintained that international law does not permit the United States to reinterpret treaties ratified by Congress years after they went into force. If Congress did this, the senators argued, then foreign countries could reinterpret the Geneva Conventions in the event they capture American soldiers overseas and want to interrogate them using harsh methods.

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Men and Depression: New Treatments - Newsweek Health

Men & Depression: Facing Darkness

By By Julie ScelfoNewsweek

Feb. 26, 2007 issue - For nearly a decade, while serving as an elected official and working as an attorney, Massachusetts state Sen. Bob Antonioni struggled with depression, although he didn't know it. Most days, he attended Senate meetings and appeared on behalf of clients at the courthouse. But privately, he was irritable and short-tempered, ruminating endlessly over his cases and becoming easily frustrated by small things, like deciding which TV show to watch with his girlfriend. After a morning at the state house, he'd be so exhausted by noon that he'd drive home and collapse on the couch, unable to move for the rest of the day.

When his younger brother, who was similarly moody, killed himself in 1999, Antonioni, then 40, decided to seek help. For three years, he clandestinely saw a therapist, paying in cash so there would be no record. He took antidepressants, but had his prescriptions filled at a pharmacy 20 miles away. His depression was his burden, and his secret. He couldn't bear for his image to be any less than what he thought it should be. "I didn't want to sound like I couldn't take care of myself, that I wasn't a man," says Antonioni.

Then, in 2002, his chief of staff discovered him on the floor of his state-house office, unable to stop crying. Antonioni, now 48, decided he had to open up to his friends and family. A few months later, invited to speak at a mental-health vigil, he found the courage to talk publicly about his problem. Soon after, a local reporter wrote about Antonioni's ongoing struggle with the disease. Instead of being greeted with jeers, he was hailed as a hero, and inundated with cards and letters from his constituents. "The response was universally positive. I was astounded."

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A Depression Screening Test

Six million American men will be diagnosed with depression this year. But millions more suffer silently, unaware that their problem has a name or unwilling to seek treatment. In a confessional culture in which Americans are increasingly obsessed with their health, it may seem clich? d??"men are from Mars, women from Venus, and all that??"to say that men tend not to take care of themselves and are reluctant to own up to mental illness. But the facts suggest that, well, men tend not to take care of themselves and are reluctant to own up to mental illness. Although depression is emotionally crippling and has numerous medical implications??"some of them deadly??"many men fail to recognize the symptoms. Instead of talking about their feelings, men may mask them with alcohol, drug abuse, gambling, anger or by becoming workaholics. And even when they do realize they have a problem, men often view asking for help as an admission of weakness, a betrayal of their male identities.

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Pensions agency reports deficit of $18.1 billion - Retirement

Pensions agency reports deficit of $18.1 billion

Smaller shortfall aided by special treatment for airlines

WASHINGTON - The federal agency that insures private pension plans for millions of Americans logged a deficit of $18.1 billion this year, a big improvement from last year as a new law helped to put the agency on better financial footing.

The narrower deficit for the 2006 fiscal year reported by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Wednesday was down from a shortfall of $22.8 billion recorded in 2005 and a record $23.3 billion posted in 2004.

“The PBGC’s financial condition appears to have stabilized for the time being,” said Vince Snowbarger, interim director of the agency, which insures pensions for 44 million workers and retirees.

The agency disclosed in its annual financial report that as of Sept. 30 it had assets of $60 billion to cover liabilities of $78.1 billion.

PBGC mainly attributed the shrinking deficit to a provision in the new pension law that carves out special treatment for the airline industry, giving airlines that are in bankruptcy court and have frozen their pension plans extra time for their pension plans to become financially whole.

The agency said this led to a sharp reduction in the amount of probable liabilities reflected on the agency’s balance sheet.

Still, the report comes as Americans are feeling anxious about their retirement security. In recent years, an explosion of ailing companies have jettisoned their pension liabilities to the PBGC. The problem has been especially pronounced in industries such as steel and the airlines, which are heavily unionized.

Organized labor wants the new Democrat-controlled Congress, which will convene in January, to provide for more pension protections, including for defined benefit plans, which are increasingly being replaced by 401(k) plans.

The PBGC was created in 1974 as a government insurance program for traditional, defined benefit pension plans. Those plans give retirees a fixed monthly amount based on salary and years of employment. Companies that sponsor these traditional pension plans pay insurance premiums to the agency. If a company can’t support its pension obligations, the agency takes over the plan and pays promised benefits up to certain limits.

The maximum annual benefit for plans taken over in 2006 is $47,659 for workers who wait until 65 to retire. Workers who retire before 65 get smaller benefits.

Addressing the PBGC’s overall red ink this year, Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, said: “From the individual worker’s standpoint, you are still looking at a big deficit. The message here is even if you have a pension, you still need to save on your own because the health of that pension when you go to retire could be tenuous. So it is important to take advantage of tax-favored retirement savings options such as a 401(k) and an IRA.”

Traditional pension plans are still underfunded but not by as much as in the past, the agency said. These pensions now are underfunded by $350 billion, compared with $450 billion last year. Higher interest rates, a better performing stock market, improved credit ratings and better plan funding by some companies were among the factors that helped to narrow this underfunding gap, economists said.

The agency said it was responsible for the pension benefits of 1.3 million workers and retirees this year, reflecting no net change from last year. The amount of benefits paid increased to $4.1 billion this year from $3.7 billion last year. The amount is projected to rise to $4.8 billion next year.

President Bush in August signed a bill to shore up funding for traditional pensions. Supporters hope the changes will help prevent a multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of the PBGC.

In addition to insurance premiums paid by companies, PBGC’s operations are financed by money it earns from investments and funds from pension plans it takes over. The agency is not financed through tax revenues.

Copyright 2006 . .