A rare virus that causes intense joint pain and fever has struck a Hollywood actress.
Lindsay Lohan was confirmed by doctors to have contracted Chikungunya, a virus transmitted to humans through mosquitoes. The actress contracted the virus during a trip to French Polynesia.
“Being sick is no fun. But happy new year everyone. Be safe. Love all,” the actress said on Twitter after telling her followers to always use bug spray when you are outside to avoid mosquito borne illnesses.
The disease is gaining attention according to the World Health Organization because it is spreading from Asia, Africa and India to the rest of the world. The virus has been found in parts of Florida in recent years and officials are concerned it could spread in the U.S.
There have been over 4,000 cases of the virus in U.S. territories, mostly in Puerto Rico. The only state that is considered to have “locally acquired” cases is Florida. However, travel related cases have been reported in all states except Alaska, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.
The CDC says that most Americans and people in North and South America have no immunity to the virus because it is new to the Western Hemisphere.
Health officials fighting the outbreak of Ebola in Liberia have confirmed that a new wave of the virus has broken out near the Sierra Leone border.
Authorities say that dozens of new cases have been rushing into health centers and marks a huge setback to the nation, which had thought they were bringing the viral outbreak under control.
Assistant Health minister Tolbert Nyenswah said that the new cases could be connected to people traveling across the Sierra Leone border and returning home. Sierra Leone has passed Liberia for the total number of Ebola cases.
Liberia has reported close to 3,400 deaths from Ebola and over 8,000 cases. The World Health Organization says that Sierra Leone has now passed Liberia with 9,000 cases of the deadly virus.
Liberian officials did not say if they would take steps to block border crossings.
The mosquito that transmits yellow fever has been found in two locations in Los Angeles County California.
The aggressive mosquito is known for biting in the daytime and was found October 7th and 8th in Commerce and Pico Rivera.
The species, Aedes aegypti, transmits yellow fever along with others such as dengue fever and chikungunya.
“While these debilitating viruses, so far, aren’t locally transmitted in L.A. County, the mosquitoes that can transmit them are now here,” Susanne Kluh, the district’s director of scientific-technical services, said in a statement quoted by the LA Times. “Infected travelers can bring these viruses to Los Angeles County.”
The yellow fever mosquito thrives in urban environments and usually uses small, man-made containers to lay eggs.
Officials speculate the mosquitoes arrived in California through eggs on imported tires or plants.
Florida health officials are raising the alarm about two mosquito-borne diseases that have shown up in the state.
The Florida Department of Health stated in its latest weekly report that 24 cases of potentially fatal Dengue Fever have been found in the state along with 18 cases of the extremely painful Chikungunya virus. Both diseases are viral and spread through mosquito bites.
All of the infected people reportedly traveled through the Caribbean or South America and most likely were infected during their travels. However, the health officials cannot confirm they did not contract the virus from a domestic mosquito bite.
“The threat is greater than I’ve seen in my lifetime,” said Walter Tabachnick, director of the Florida Medical Entomological Laboratory and 30-year veteran of epidemiology. “Sooner or later, our mosquitoes will pick it up and transmit it to us. That is the imminent threat.”
Health officials are asking residents to work with local governments to eliminate areas where mosquitos breed. This includes elimination of standing water such as in buckets and rain barrels.
“If there is public apathy and people don’t clean up the yards, we’re going to have a problem,” Tabachnick said.
The Centers for Disease Control has confirmed the death of a Texas patient who contracted a disease connected to Mad Cow Disease.
The patient died from Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. The disease is a rare, degenerative and fatal brain disorder that is caused by the consumption of meat and other products from cows suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy or “Mad Cow Disease.”
The CDC said this is the fourth time Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease has been found in the United States. The first three cases were confirmed to have contracted the virus outside the USA where the variant is more prevalent and the most recent patient had extensively traveled to Europe and the Middle East. Most of the world’s cases have been in the United Kingdom and France.
Classic CJD is not caused by the Mad Cow Disease related agent. In the United States, classic CJD is found in one person per 1 million residents each year.
What doctors feared could happen in the Caribbean with the chikungunya virus has become a reality: the disease has obtained a foothold.
Doctors across the Caribbean are reporting over 4,000 cases of the mosquito-borne virus that causes high fever and intense joint pain. While 4,000 cases have been confirmed, there have been at least 31,000 other cases that have not been laboratory confirmed.
The painful illness is mostly found in Asia and Africa. The first case in the Caribbean was detected in December in St. Martin in a resident who have traveled back home from Africa.
The disease, while rarely fatal, causes severe joint pain that can last for months or years. In some cases, the pain is so significant that it leaves the patients unable to walk.
Doctors say the virus has no vaccine.
Doctors with the CDC are monitoring the situation where they say the virus is spreading in an “uncontrolled” manner. They advise anyone travelling to the Caribbean to make sure to wear heavy amounts of mosquito repellant and to make sure they refresh that protect on a regular basis.
Health officials in the region say that once a virus becomes entrenched in a region, it is extremely difficult to eradicate it. The area’s wet season is also coming up when it sees a major rise in the mosquito population.
Officials in the U.K. have reported the first ever confirmed case of humans contracting tuberculosis from cats.
Public Health England reported that the two human cases are linked to nine cases of infection in cats. PHE reports that the two human patients have been responding well to treatment.
Veterinarians believe the cats likely contracted the disease from badgers or from rodents that had been inside badger setts.
“We’ve all become rather complacent because we haven’t been seeing TB for so many years but bovis is back with a little bit more significance,” Professor Danielle Gunn-Moore, a feline researcher, told the Daily Telegraph. “It’s important we don’t get blinkered and think it’s only badgers and cattle that get infected. This is a bacteria that is not very fussy about who it infects.”
PHE reports at least 39 people have been in close contact with the infected cats and are being monitored by health officials.
A rare bacterium has been discovered at fish markets in multiple New York boroughs and has been confirmed to have infected at least 30 people.
Health officials say they do not know the source of the outbreak. The bacterium, Mycobacterium marinum, is common in fish but does not normally infect humans. Markets in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan have been found to have the bacterium.
The infection causes bumps under the skin or tender lesions. Once the bumps turn into open wounds, they won’t heal on their own. If the infections are not cleared at that point, they can go deeper into the skin and require surgery.
Dr. Jay Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control, said a part of the problem in finding the source is that the infection can take weeks to show even the most mild symptoms.
A doctor in the Chinatown section of New York said that many patients who came to him said they were infected at a site where they were cut by a fish bone. One victim said they had cut themselves on a lobster.
The H1N1 virus, which killed over 14,000 people in a 2009 global pandemic, has returned with a vengeance in the 2013-14 flu season.
The Centers for Disease Control says that for the first time since that 2009 outbreak, H1N1 has been killing victims at an epidemic level.
The CDC says that the death toll is only a fraction of the 2009 outbreak but that levels are significantly higher than previous years. With six weeks to go in the flu season, some states have seen more than a nine-fold increase in deaths. California has 243 deaths this year compared to 26 at this time last year.
Some California hospitals have been so overrun with flu patients that they have set up triage units in their parking lots to keep infected patients away from potentially immunosuppressed patients in the main hospital building.
Many Californians rushed to get flu shots after a woman who worked for Sacramento’s ABC TV affiliate died from H1N1 within four days of feeling ill.
The CDC also says that surveillance reports in Virginia and Maryland show a wide outbreak of H1N1 but they along with the District of Columbia do not record deaths from the flu.
Duke University Medical Center reported a disturbing trend in that most hospitalized flu patients were younger, an average age of 28.5, and had more significant complications than in previous H1N1 outbreaks.
Ticks around San Francisco, California have been discovered to be carrying a newly discovered bacterium with unknown health effects.
The Stanford University study said that the bacteria, Borrelia miyamotoi, have been found on ticks that were also carrying the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. The study is due to be published in the March issue of Emerging Infectious Disease.
The researchers said the amount of ticks with both bacteria were very small, as little as two percent of the entire amount found during the study. However, the bacteria was found on ticks in all of the 12 recreational areas around San Francisco that was part of the study.
The first human case of infection from B. miyamotoi was discovered in 2013 and other than the patient developing symptoms similar to Lyme disease, little was learned about the bacteria.
One researcher says that patients who are treated for Lyme disease and do not recover could likely be infected with the new bacteria.
The Centers for Disease Control says that Lyme cases are rising because doctors are more familiar with signs of the infection.
