Infectious Diseases

Someplace in Africa, a bug bites a bird.And sets in motion, months later and a continent away, a chain of events that includes emergency spraying for mosquitoes in the asphalt-and-concrete canyons of New York City; deployment of health officials to collect and test dead birds in several states; a run on bug spray up and down the East Coast; and all-nighters in virology labs from Ames, Iowa, to Irvine, Calif.The outbreak of illness in New York since August, originally believed to be St. Louis encephalitis, was identified last week as closely resembling two even more exotic diseases, also transmitted by mosquitoes: West Nile virus, usually found in Africa, and Kunjin virus, from Australia.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton will soon propose a $25 million initiative to combat the spread of infectious diseases, including virulent new strains of microbes that resist treatment by antibiotics and other drugs, administration officials said yesterday.Public health officials have become alarmed about the emergence of such "superbugs" and more generally about the increasing incidence of infectious diseases once thought to be under control.The extra money will be included in the budget request that Clinton sends to Congress early next year, administration officials said.

The Miami Herald wrote in an editorial Monday:FOR black Americans, life in the 1990s is, to quote Charles Dickens, the best of times and the worst of times.The good news is that African-Americans have made major advances in the past quarter-century in education, employment, housing, civil rights and other areas. The level of poverty among blacks has shrunk, and the income gap between blacks and whites is getting smaller.Disturbing trendAt the same time, some studies now show a growing disparity in the health of blacks and whites.

Deadly bacteria could be wafting undetected through air conditioners. Microbiologists in Maryland have shown that current tests can miss airborne bacteria even when the cells are abundant. Many unexplained hospital disease outbreaks, they suggest, could be triggered by infected ventilation systems.Bacteria that infect moist ventilation systems include species that cause pneumonia, meningitis and legionnaire's disease. So hospitals routinely screen air samples for potential pathogens, as do public-health scientists trying to track down the source of disease outbreaks linked to particular buildings.

LAMBARENE, Gabon -- A child died of malaria at the Schweitzer Hospital one recent night, but there were no heroic measures.For most of the staff, it was tragically familiar.Summoned to the pediatric ward, Dr. Daniela Schmid arrived as a young mother stood next to the body of her toddler. He had died, it seems, of acute anemia. Malaria parasites had destroyed so much of his blood that it couldn't carry enough oxygen to keep him alive.His mother was silent. Nurses paused in their rounds. Patients' families, who typically stay with sick relatives, stood quietly in the echoing corridor.

WASHINGTON -- Cancer deaths will double in many countries and heart diseases will soar worldwide over the next 25 years, the World Health Organization predicts, in part because of lethal habits spreading from the United States.The rise in these diseases will be especially troublesome for developing countries already battling infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, WHO says in its annual report, being released today.A big part of the cause of the increase, the report's author said, is that the United States has helped sell cigarette smoking and a fatty diet to the world.

WASHINGTON -- AIDS researchers reported for the first time yesterday that a combination of drugs containing a powerful new protease inhibitor appears to have partially restored the immune system of people with moderately advanced HIV disease.Because their conclusions are based on results of sophisticated tests of immune system cells in the laboratory, however, it remains uncertain whether these "reconstituted" cells actually can protect infected individuals from developing the serious and often life-threatening infections that characterize acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Smoking will become the single largest cause of death and disability in the world within the next 25 years, according to the first comprehensive, global study of how people die.Noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes -- often thought to strike primarily the affluent -- already cause more deaths in the developing world than infectious diseases, the five-year study showed.The study, done by a team headquartered at the Harvard University School of Public Health and released yesterday, found that depression, also associated with affluence, accounts for 10 percent of productive years lost throughout the world.

Due to an editing error, an article about a speech by Dr. Rita Colwell in some editions of the Sunday Sun incorrectly explained how women in Bangladesh can use the fabric of their saris to prevent cholera, which is spread by organisms in water. Four layers of the fabric are used to filter drinking water.The Sun regrets the errors.Carrying her young son in her arms, the woman is rushing into a hospital. There, doctors look at his shrunken, wrinkled abdomen. They diagnose him with cholera.Rita R. Colwell showed slides of this boy last night as she warned her fellow scientists that environmental factors are also implicated in the spread of the devastating disease, which is traditionally linked with the man-made problem of raw sewage mixing with drinking water.

Peter H. Duesberg is an accomplished Berkeley virologist who has challenged the concept that HIV causes AIDS. He is a respected scientist, but now seems willing to sacrifice his integrity among peers to become the darling of an anti-cult determined to dispute a substantive scientific fact.He has been doing this since 1987 and has achieved substantial media hype as well as a small gathering of followers including an occasional Nobel laureate. Among scientists and physicians in the field of HIV, his views were at one time considered provocative, but now are generally viewed as antiquated at best, and dangerously irresponsible at worst.

Mercy High School alumna named Fulbright scholar 2 Mercy High School alumna Dorothy Smith, a recent Boston College graduate, has been named a Fulbright scholar. Smith, a Parkville resident who graduated from Mercy in 2005, will travel to Jordan to study Arabic for two months before arriving in Oman in August. During her year in Oman, she will conduct research on water conservation education and awareness. She is the first alumna in Mercy's 49-year history to be named a Fulbright scholar.

In the rush of constant news updates on swine flu, we must recognize that controlling the spread of this disease is not simply a health concern but also one of national security. And in today's globalized world, the spread of swine flu has become not just a U.S. national security threat but every country's national security threat. The serious implications of this epidemic can be seen in the language used by officials and by the appearance of government leaders taking the podium. The World Health Organization has elevated its pandemic alert level from 3 to 5, indicating increasing likelihood (albeit not inevitability)

When Mary Patricia Sullivan returned with her three daughters to Maryland in 2003 after spending seven years researching HIV/AIDS in Uganda, she was intent on giving them the best American school experience possible, friends said. After researching several school systems, Ms. Sullivan moved her family into a two-story house with light purple shutters on York Road in Hereford to take advantage of the schools in northern Baltimore County, they said. Ms. Sullivan, 47, was killed Tuesday morning when a stolen pickup truck swerved off York Road and smashed through a wall into the first-floor bedroom where she was sleeping.

Dr. Stephen C. Schimpff, retired chief executive of the University of Maryland Medical Center, will discuss the effects of rapid advances in science and technology on the nature of health care in the future. The Columbia resident, who continues to teach in the fields of oncology and infectious diseases and to practice, will speak at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the central library, 10375 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. Copies of his book, The Future of Medicine: Megatrends in Health Care That Will Improve Your Quality of Life, will be available for purchase and signing.

In a first-ever analysis, 25 percent of all teenage girls in the U.S. and nearly half of African-American girls ages 14 to 19 were found to have a sexually transmitted disease. Those alarming rates suggest that admonitions to teenagers about safe sex are falling on deaf ears and that when it comes to infectious diseases, a lot more effort must be put into education, screening and prevention. Some experts familiar with high levels of sexual activity among teenagers as well as young women's greater vulnerability to STDs weren't surprised by the results.

FREDERICK -- Construction is already under way on a new $1 billion biodefense research center at Fort Detrick, but some neighboring residents - and at least one elected official - are questioning how safe it is to expand laboratories working with dangerous disease agents such as Ebola and smallpox in the midst of the densely populated Frederick community. Fort Detrick, which has been working with deadly pathogens since World War II, is an economic engine for Frederick County and has enjoyed staunch support from local business and political leaders for decades.

Dr. Phuong X. Nguyen has joined the surgical department at Mercy Medical Center, where he will focus on general surgery. Nguyen graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder and earned his medical degree from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Bonnie Eareckson has been appointed the chief of human resource management service for the Veterans Affairs Maryland Health Care System. Eareckson earned her undergraduate degree in 1983 from Southern Career Institute. Dr. Deepak Kashyap has joined the Endocrine and Diabetes Center at Franklin Square Hospital Center.

Two years ago, the nation was beset by a severe shortage of flu shots, with huge lines at clinics and many people going without. This year, it looks as if there might be a glut. Yet, somewhat perversely, because of distribution delays earlier in the season, this year's abundant supply has not meant that everyone who wanted a flu shot has received one. The situation underscores the uncertain nature of the nation's supply system for flu vaccine, a risky and volatile business with thin profits, in which the federal government has a limited role.

Peter Joseph Stopa, a civilian researcher with the Army who made important scientific and diplomatic contributions to biological defense technologies, died Tuesday at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, three weeks after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. The Freeland resident was 54. Since 1988, Mr. Stopa had worked at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, where he helped develop tools that can detect chemical and biological weapons. He was also a lead liaison between the U.S. and Polish militaries in the two countries' coordination of biological defense efforts.

Millions of miserable, sneezing, itching, nose-blowing hay fever sufferers could find a strand of hope in a DNA-based vaccine developed by Johns Hopkins scientists, who say it appears to squelch the body's allergic response to ragweed pollen. A small but promising study reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine says test subjects who had just six weekly injections of the vaccine - a fusion of bacterial DNA and ragweed protein - enjoyed a 60 percent reduction in allergy symptoms compared with people who got a placebo.