Posted on 11/05/2016 9:04:13 PM PDT by BenLurkin
CDC said Friday that 13 people have become ill from Candida Auris, a sometimes fatal infection with a high likelihood of causing outbreaks in healthcare facilities.
...
Seven U.S. cases occurred between May 2013 and Aug. 2016 in Illinois, Maryland, New York and New Jersey. Four of the 7 infected patients died, but it is not yet clear if their deaths were due to C. Auris...
Lab evidence suggests these cases are related to those in South America and South Asia with transmission occurring in healthcare settings.
(Excerpt) Read more at wfla.com ...
Lab evidence suggests these cases are related to those in South America and South Asia with transmission occurring in healthcare settings.
Well, isn’t that special.
The fungus among us.
Yeah this is some nasty stuff. Looks like mostly for those on chemo or otherwise immune-compromised. But the outbreaks in healthcare settings are a concern.
Candida Crowley is spreading it!
I have the vinyl album of “There’s A Fungus Among Us.” Earl Hooker. Great album!
PING
Candida Auris - fungus that grows as yeast and is ascomycetous, and is multidrug resistant.
" 4 out of 7 patients died; occurs mostly in heathcare facilities" where patients have a suppressed immune system.
"Lab evidence suggests these cases are related to those in South America and South Asia with transmission occurring in healthcare settings."
“All patients had serious underlying medical conditions, including tumors, vascular disease and bone marrow transplants. The average time from hospital admission to isolation of C. auris was 18 days. Five patients with bloodstream infections had central venous catheters at the time C. auris was identified.”
In another article, I read all 7 died.
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.
ping...
Man. I sure hope that doesn’t come to a hospital near me. That is scary.
Another benefit of diversity.
I did some checking with some Indian medical journals, the CDC, and some other sources and they are all focusing on two things:
1. Hard to identify with existing tools. Using the mycological identification tools they currently have, this strain identifies as two other more common types of yeast.
2. It is resistant to most of the anti-fungal drugs available.
The good news is this appears, for the moment, to be an infection of fortune - opportunistic. You have to be in bad shape and essentially in a hospital to get it.
However, bad shape CAN be defined as diabetic. Diabetes is one of the diseases indicated that would put you at higher risk.
What is NOT mentioned by any source is any detail on cultivation and propagation.
Best guess they have now is that it is a urinary tract infection. 3 of the 5 people with central lines that died of this disease had the catheters with no traces of the yeast present.
Even if you are cured of symptoms, you are likely still a colony for the yeast.
What I am curious about, and it seems to be a closely held detail, is whether this yeast is airborne.
Indian journals detail spread in hospitals across multiple, mutually exclusive wings and departments of hospitals. These departments had staff, including admin and janitorial, which were completely separate. The disease spread anyway.
Airborne yeast is common. If these spores are airborne, that’s an issue. The central line thing is interesting, in that if the yeast settles in the lungs, then a possible vector of transmission is through the patient breathing spores.
The lit basically suggests that IF they could spot it earlier THEN they could PROBABLY beat it with existing anti-fungals. They are not talking much about how it is spread.
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