Imported lassa fever - reexamining the algorithms

Article Abstract:

Lassa fever is an endemic virus-induced fever that was first identified in northeastern Nigeria. The disease is spread by the urine of a rat (Mastomys natalensis) and perhaps by person-to-person contact. The incubation period of the virus ranges from 7 to 18 days. It is estimated that there are approximately 300,000 human infections and 5,000 deaths per year. Lassa fever accounts for more than one third of hospital deaths in eastern Sierra Leone in West Africa. Cases have now been reported from the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, and Japan. The disease's symptoms include headache, malaise, painful joints, inflammation of the pharynx, chest pain beneath the sternum (breast bone), vomiting, small vessel hemorrhages, abdominal soreness, decreased blood pressure (hypotension), and bleeding from the gums, nose and elsewhere. Laboratory findings include protein in the urine, and an increase in the cellularity of the blood. Patients with a severe case of the disease typically experience difficulty with respiration, brain inflammations (encephalopathy), deafness, and congestive heart failure. A case report of lassa fever in the United States is reported in the October 18, 1990 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The patient, a native Nigerian, had returned to his Chicago home after attending his mother's funeral in Nigeria. Despite accurate diagnosis upon hospital admission and subsequent antibiotic therapy, the man died of the disease. The case is analyzed and new guidelines of treatment for exposed hospital staff and other in contact with the patient are described. Although the guidelines proposed by the case report are generally helpful, additional work and thought are required before the procedures in question can be unequivocally accepted. One area of particular concern is the suggested treatment of exposed individual, particularly children, with the antiviral agent ribavirin. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

Care and treatment, Methods, Evaluation, Demographic aspects, Diseases, Public health, Nigeria, Disease transmission, Nosocomial infections, Cross infection, Ribavirin, Lassa fever, Arenaviruses

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An exotic viral disease acquired in a laboratory

Article Abstract:

The infection of a virologist working with a rare and deadly virus raises important issues. The virologist worked at Yale and was infected with Sabia virus, a Brazilian virus that causes a hemorrhagic fever. He was rapidly diagnosed and successfully treated. A description of how he was contaminated raises questions about the adequacy of the precautions taken in his laboratory. It also reminds us that specialized training is required and that the Centers for Disease Control has not been as active in this area as it has been. The hospital in which he was treated took elaborate precautions to protect against the spread of infection, which raises the issue of the need to update guidelines. Improving laboratory infection control will require funding. It would be unfortunate if this was interpreted as a reason to close academic laboratories and leave governmental agencies to do the research. Research into infectious diseases needs to be expanded, not shrunk.

Editorial, Safety and security measures, Virus diseases, Medical laboratories, Biomedical laboratories, Hemorrhagic fever, Hemorrhagic fevers

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Dengue and yellow fever - challenges for the development and use of vaccines

Article Abstract:

The research work related to safer vaccines to control and prevent the single-stranded RNA viruses of Dengue and yellow fever is reviewed.

United States, Science & research, Goods & services distribution, Channels of Distribution, Research, Risk factors, Distribution, Vaccines, Dengue, Dengue fever, Yellow fever, Company distribution practices, RNA viruses

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