Deadly Drug-Resistant Fungus Is 'Quietly Spreading Across the Globe' (msn.com) 117
A drug-resistant fungus called Candida auris "is quietly spreading across the globe," reports the New York Times:
Over the last five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical center to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa. Recently C. auris reached New York, New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to add it to a list of germs deemed "urgent threats...."
In the United States, two million people contract resistant infections annually, and 23,000 die from them, according to the official CDC estimate. That number was based on 2010 figures; more recent estimates from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine put the death toll at 162,000. Worldwide fatalities from resistant infections are estimated at 700,000.... With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs.
Even the CDC, under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. State governments have in many cases declined to publicly share information beyond acknowledging that they have had cases.... [A] hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients -- or prospective ones.
The Times reports that C. auris targets people with weakened immune systems (including babies and the elderly) -- and that 587 cases of C. auris have already been reported in the U.S., according to the CDC: 309 cases in New York, 104 in New Jersey, and 144 in Illinois. The CDC adds that half the patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days.
It also survived in a room treated for an entire week with aerosolized hydrogen peroxide, according to the Times. "Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines."
The New York Post adds that "Given the speed at which the inspection spreads, coupled with its resistance to medication, 'the prospect of an endemic or epidemic multidrug-resistant yeast in U.S. healthcare facilities is troubling,' the CDC said in October."
In the United States, two million people contract resistant infections annually, and 23,000 die from them, according to the official CDC estimate. That number was based on 2010 figures; more recent estimates from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine put the death toll at 162,000. Worldwide fatalities from resistant infections are estimated at 700,000.... With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs.
Even the CDC, under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. State governments have in many cases declined to publicly share information beyond acknowledging that they have had cases.... [A] hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients -- or prospective ones.
The Times reports that C. auris targets people with weakened immune systems (including babies and the elderly) -- and that 587 cases of C. auris have already been reported in the U.S., according to the CDC: 309 cases in New York, 104 in New Jersey, and 144 in Illinois. The CDC adds that half the patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days.
It also survived in a room treated for an entire week with aerosolized hydrogen peroxide, according to the Times. "Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines."
The New York Post adds that "Given the speed at which the inspection spreads, coupled with its resistance to medication, 'the prospect of an endemic or epidemic multidrug-resistant yeast in U.S. healthcare facilities is troubling,' the CDC said in October."
Re:Yikes (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? H2O2 is said to cause cell walls to burst in bacteria and have good antifungal properties. Thats why it provides almost immediate relief for infected teeth. Don't post stuff like this if you have no clue what you're talking about.
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Really? H2O2 is said to cause cell walls to burst in bacteria and have good antifungal properties. Thats why it provides almost immediate relief for infected teeth. Don't post stuff like this if you have no clue what you're talking about.
I don't know much about what it's said to do or who says it, but in the brewing industry, everyone uses something stronger than peroxide. Bleach, chlorine dioxide, and peracetic acid are common. Anionic acid sanitizers and iodophor are faster than peroxide, though not necessarily stronger. Chlorine dioxide and paraformaldehyde were used for anthrax remediation, not peroxide. Am I cherry-picking the data? I don't know of any places peroxide is used, except when the goal is to *not* kill everything, such as i
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Hydrogen peroxide isn't exactly a strong cleaning agent for something that can naturally occur in your body. Maybe look for something a little more deadly
Kinda depends on the concentration... At 3% you have what you get at the store, at 80% you have rocket fuel.
Lacking holism in industrialized medicine (Score:4, Interesting)
Modern medicine and scientific approaches to medicine focus on a pathogen and it's specific cure. The discovery of a pathogen and how to kill it and prevent it's spread probably sparked this paradigm (Louis Pasteur & Rabies), which was reinforced by Koch's Postulates surrounding tuberculosis and anthrax, and cemented by Fleming's discovery of penicillin. This is outlined brilliantly in the book "Microbe Hunters" by Paul de Kruif.
Now we are discovering that we live in a massively interconnected biological system, and we are playing whack-a-mole. Also, should climate change actually warm things up a bit, I suspect we'll discover all sorts of new breeding grounds for microorganisms that won't play well with us.
Sadly, it may be required that we re-engineer much more than greenhouse gasses to preserve our concept of a modern society. Humans have significantly changed many aspects of habitats around the globe, which may cause the evolutionary behavior known as Punctuated Equilibrium [wikipedia.org] to create biological changes faster than we can keep up.
We might want to worry less about losing our job to AI, and start utilizing AI, along with whatever innate intelligence we may think we have, to survive, period.
Evolution is a tough bitch, and Gaia [wikipedia.org] eats her young [wikipedia.org], and we may have just given her a new condiment [wikipedia.org].
Re:Lacking holism in industrialized medicine (Score:5, Insightful)
So how is holism going to save us ?
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So how is holism going to save us ?
The same way holism has been allowing humans to develop more interconnected social structures and technologies for many thousands of years:
First, we don't defecate in our drinking water, it spreads disease.
Second, we don't procreate with our children or siblings, it causes significant genetic problems that last for generations. Fear not, Rednecks, an occasional kissing cousin might be fine. [youtu.be]
Third, and please try to keep up here, we don't allow psychopathic individuals or organizations to make or enforce pol [acuitymag.com]
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The three things you mention, we've been doing less in the recent past, compared to "many thousands of years". Doesn't seem to be helping.
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Third, and please try to keep up here, we don't allow psychopathic individuals or organizations to make or enforce policies.
OY! If only I could give a thousand "Funny" mods for that one!
Re:Lacking holism in industrialized medicine (Score:4, Insightful)
Third, and please try to keep up here, we don't allow psychopathic individuals or organizations to make or enforce policies.
Surely you are joking? As far as I can see, the system prevents everyone *except* psychopathic individuals and organizations from making policies.
Just think of any corporate CxOs you know about, or any senior political leaders.
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Follow the link. I agree with you, we shouldn't be allowing policy to be set as they currently are.
In Estonia... (Score:5, Interesting)
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In Germany They have some theatres with windows that open to allow fresh air and sunlight. Sunlight kills most bad things.
In Australai they plan lots of operations back to back , only 8 hours a day to save on nurse costs - so the surgeons have a restriction on operation times - an thus big long waiting lists.
Like visiting the dentist, the most infectious patients are done last in the day for a deep clean, rather than a wipeover. Now how many hospitals have a rooftop theatre?
The alternative is closed loop ai
Re:People always want drugs and antibiotics to sav (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got news for dumbasses like you. Vaccines are not like antibiotics or other antimicrobals.
If you grow a culture of bacteria or fungi in your petri dish and put an appropriate antimicrobal into it, like antibiotics or antifungals, they will kill the cultures.
If you grow a culture of bacteria or fungi or have viruses in your petri dish and you put an appropriate vaccine into there nothing of consequence happens.
Why? This is because vaccines work fundamentally different. For vaccines to work a functioning immune system is required in the first place. Only then a vaccine can work by given the immune system an example of a pathogen to prepare against for future encounters. That's the point of vaccines, they improve the immune system.
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Re:People always want drugs and antibiotics to sav (Score:4, Informative)
The main difference between our immune system and these antimicrobials is that antimicrobials can not adapt.
These are basically inanimate poisons for the pathogens, which destroy their cell membranes and or otherwise inhibit their ability to reproduce.
Our immune system however is capable of 'learning', it can adapt to new circumstances.
The problematic pathogens we are talking about here are microorganisms that generally can exist outside of a host. Microorganisms whose metabolisms are pretty flexible and they can get their energy (food) from various sources.
Now these kinds of bugs, which can replicate as long as there's food (and water) and some places that weren't sterilized thoroughly enough, are always exposed to the same kind of antagonist.
And due to their short replication cycles the likelihood of developing a resistance against that particular antagonist is increased.
This makes the overuse of these antimicrobials concerning, while disinfecting hospital equipment or hospital space in general, when doctors prescribe unnecessary antibiotics for things like inflamed throats because colds or flus (which are caused by viruses), when livestock is unnecessarily fed antibiotics and so forth.
When it comes vaccines you can think of it this way: Pathogens will enter in the human body no matter what.
Strengthening the hosts natural immune responses does reduce the time frame in which they can mutate inside a host.
It also reduces the time frame during which the host may infect other hosts.
Hypothetically a super bug could emerge here as well, we should not deny this possibility. For example if a host was constantly exposed to a significant enough external supply of these pathogens, this may be a plausible scenario.
The big question would be if we're artificially speeding up that evolution with vaccination like with the overuse of antimicrobials or not.
Fortunately empirical evidence with cases like polio or small pox support the assumption that pathogens don't fare as well against a vaccinated adaptive immune system than against these 'static' antimicrobials.
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I'll believe it when I hear it from a 150 year old person.
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Medicine.
Pharmas ain't doing jack (Score:4, Insightful)
We might have a fighting chance against resistant bugs if pharmas did fundamental research on possible cures. But they're much happier putting out endless low-risk, high profit margin respins on aspiring, paracetamol , ibuprofen or prozac.
Also, they don't have much incentive to create one-off cures. That's why we still don't have an AIDS vaccine or an affordable cure for malaria. Selling litetime drugs is a much more attractive business proposition.
Re:Pharmas ain't doing jack: ORLY? (Score:3)
Also, they don't have much incentive to create one-off cures. That's why we still don't have an AIDS vaccine or an affordable cure for malaria.
ORLY?
I was under the impression that we didn't have a vaccing or cure (affordable or otherwise) because these two pathogens are very hard problems.
HIV: Like the Black Plague before it, it attacks the immune system directly (via the same target!). Unlike Plague, it works slowly and uses an error-prone replication to mutate VERY rapidly, so an end-stage patient has m
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It's actually both. It *is* a difficult problem, but the pharma companies are also reluctant to work on cures. They need to recoup the development expenses, and people keep complaining if too much is charged for a dose. So it's much better if you get them dependent, so they don't dare cause you to just withdraw from the market.
Both effects are well documented. It's not just one. Eliminating either would produce improved results.
That said, large numbers of companies have invested huge amounts of effort
We won't win (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end it'll just be a global case of pathogen whack-a-mole as more and more diseases become resistent to the ever shrinking amount of medicines we have to combat them. When you're talking about fungi, bacteria and viruses that can evolve resistance faster than we can create new drugs to combat them the end game is obvious. Of course in the case of bacteria it could be slowed by farmers not force feeding antibiotics to livestock whether they need it or not.
I have no idea what the solution is , if there is one, but I suspect in 50 years time the days of taking pills to cure infection may well be over.
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If it gets bad enough we could in theory massively lock down migration, global quarantine. Only goods which can be sterilized and information will be allowed to travel large distances ... not people or animals.
Ethics in Medicine..? (Score:5, Interesting)
"With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs."
Uh, they're "reluctant"?
if you have an outbreak in a particular area, then you fucking are an infection hub. Mandatory disclosure for shit like this should be the bare minimum to remove the ethical excuses and help prevent irrational decisions from perpetuating an outbreak.
And you're going to tell me we simply cannot use the Data here? Forget humans realizing there's an outbreak going on; we should have machines learning and alerting on this as they crawl through our electronic medical record systems all day. Yes, we likely know how fractured medical data warehouses still are, but could still likely be done at the major/regional hospital level that all run the same medical systems.
Put a few marketing dollars behind it, and you could likely get that data for free by crowd sourcing it. Perhaps voluntary disclosure of symptoms/illnesses in real time from the masses is a way to stay in front of an outbreak in a particular area. Of course, you would also have to validate those claims in some way, otherwise just like everything else crowd-enabled, it risks being abused to distort the truth.
"Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines."
Yeah, or one could peek back at history and consider this particular evolution could have been man-made as well. Stranger things have happened.
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Yeah, or one could peek back at history and consider this particular evolution could have been man-made as well. Stranger things have happened.
Name five.
Re: Ethics in Medicine..? (Score:2)
"we should have machines learning and alerting on this as they crawl through our electronic medical record systems all day"
CDC already does this, calling it "disease surveillance". There are several systems in place, however none of them is really comprehensive yet. See for example https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nndss/ [cdc.gov]
And at what point will people talk about ... (Score:2, Insightful)
A what point will people admit that intercontinental travel and trade pose serious ecological risks and really need to be better controled.
Also: At what point (if any) will we be able to discuss the disease spreading issues of lax border security, without being shut down as "racist hate-mongers" by SJWs?
The open southern border of the US has now been implicated in the reintroduction of, at least:
- Measles
- Drug resistant Tuberculosis
- Virulent Newcastle Disease
and I could go on.
VND
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disease spreading issues of lax border security, without being shut down as "racist hate-mongers" by SJWs?
If we all just emphasize enough with the virus and diseases AS WELL as the illegal immigrants, they'll all start to play nice.
See -- wasn't that easy?
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Virulent Newcastle Disease
So you're saying we need a wall to stop those no-good illegal chickens from crossing the border? The chickens tend to be smuggled in through legal ports of entry. It's hard to herd chickens across the desert.
People bringing in drug resistant TB fly in, It is most prevalent in South Africa and the former Soviet Union (others say China and India rather than South Africa). A wall won't help that either.
Likewise, since Measles was imported from Israel, Ukraine, and the Philippines, it flew in and a wall wouldn'
How Incompetent we are :) (Score:1)
Re:Science was a false god (Score:5, Insightful)
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haha, and you must one of the people that conflate science with the scientific method. Yes, the scientific method is the biggest and most important pillar of science, yet there is scientific work done without it - the business of categorizing and systemic study of reality are also a part of science (look it up). For example, this would include discovering new species or classifying and cataloging stars.
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"And very few who understand the scientific method worship it blindly as a god ..."
"nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
"... in the same way as the religious worship their gods."
"Kill them all. For the Lord knows those that are His own."
Yeah, I think I'll go with Science for $100, Alex, At least in this category you have a chance to change people's minds. Also science isn't a God, it's a method, a procedure. You can (and probably should) get anal over it but unless you suspect / can prove fraud you should take their results and analyze, dissect, object, and run with it and even duplicate it -- show 'em where
Meek (Score:2)
Nature always bats last (Score:2)
We think we are in charge - well we're not!
Take off you hoser (Score:2)
Keep your Candidian fungus in Candida please!
Money talks (Score:1)
Reminds me of (Score:3)
The X-files S04Ep11 about the fungus ridden migrant worker
Stop practicing medicine (Score:1)
We have too much medicine being practiced in the world. We're not fighting disease as much as throwing chaos into the system. We start progressing on cancer and then we introduce diabetes. We start whittling away at heart disease and the we give everyone heroin.
Unless you are in debilitating pain or obviously deteriorating medically, you shouldn't be going to the doctor. None of us should.
This annual checkup, ridiculous vaccine panel, constant changing dietary recommedation, juice cleanse, organic shopping
Shhh! It's a secret (Score:2)
Go to the hospital, you roll the dice. Good luck...
Hey! Don't be giving me shit over this comment. This is how they roll. May as well tell you you're on your own. The state exists to protect business!
There's ... (Score:3)
They say ozone kills mold (Score:1)
Does it kill fungus if you "fumigate" the room/building?
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Yep, just continue feeding antibiotics as part of their diet to cattle and chicken, the fast profits on agricultural industry is all that matters. No need to limit use of antibiotics on hospitals either, you should just carry on tweeting and watching Fox news.
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I propose a new non-authenticated mode for people to express their views. Call it "Anonymous Stupid Shit Has A Theory"