Are Minnesota Health Care Workers Prepared for Ebola?
University of Minnesota officials say health experts still have a lot to learn about Ebola. Dr. Michael Osterholm, the chair of public health at the University of Minnesota, spoke Tuesday...
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Are Minnesota Health Care Workers Prepared for Ebola? - Video
Texas nurses call for new Ebola training
Nurses in Texas are calling for additional training on how to safely treat Ebola patients, including fellow health care workers who contracted the disease while caring for Thomas Eric Duncan.
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WTF! Hospital Workers Wore #39;No Hazmat Suits #39; for 2 Days While Treating Ebola Patient!
http://www.undergroundworldnews.com Health care workers treating Thomas Eric Duncan in a hospital isolation unit didn #39;t wear protective hazardous-material suits for two days until tests confirmed...
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WTF! Hospital Workers Wore 'No Hazmat Suits' for 2 Days While Treating Ebola Patient! - Video
NEW EBOLA VACCINE FOUND - 40 Health Care Workers Receive Engineered EBOLA VACCINE
Ginetically engineered Ebola vaccines are now being used on Health Care Workers who are caring for Ebola patients. "... The first-ever human trials for an Ebola vaccine started in Mali earlier...
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NEW EBOLA VACCINE FOUND - 40 Health Care Workers Receive Engineered EBOLA VACCINE - Video
WARNING! SWAT Teams! The U.S. Government Will NOW Be Aggressive Towards Anything Involving Ebola
The U.S. Government Will NOW Be Aggressive Towards Anything Involving Ebola Virus SWAT Teams President Obama CDC SWAT Teams Will Combat Ebola Ebola FEMA Camps 2nd Dallas Health ...
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Dallas will declare State of Disaster tomorrow
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/health/Dallas-County-Judge-Clay-Jenkins-Creates-Order-to-Restrict-Travel-of-Ebola-Health-Care-Workers-279336932.html.
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A Frontier Airlines plane is reportedly being disinfected in Cleveland after a second nurse to become infected with Ebola flew on the plane from Cleveland to Dallas on Monday. (Reuters)
The second health-care worker diagnosed with Ebola had a fever of 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit before boarding a passenger jet on Monday, a day before she reportedsymptoms of the virus and was tested, according to public health officials.
Even though there appeared to be little risk for the other people on that flight,she should not have traveled that way,Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a news conference Wednesday.
She should not have flown on a commercial airline,Frieden said.
This health-care worker flew on a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth with more than 130 other passengers.She did not have nausea or vomit on the plane, so the risk to anyone around her is extremely low, Frieden said.
The health-care worker was not namedby public health officials, buta spokesman for Cleveland identified her Amber Vinson.Family members told Reuters and the Dallas Morning News that Vinson is a nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.She was part of a team that had cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who flew to Texas and was diagnosed with Ebola last month, during his hospitalization in Dallas. Duncan died last week. Nina Pham, a nurse who also cared for Duncan, was diagnosed with Ebola on Sundayand was in good condition Wednesday, the hospital said.
Vinson, who flew from Dallas to Cleveland on Friday, flew back to Texas on Monday, a day after Pham was diagnosed. She reported a fever on Tuesday and was isolated and tested for Ebola.
Still, the fact that she boarded a commercial flight raises the question of how much the other 50 health-care workers who entered Duncans room could have traveled or moved around in recent days. The CDC recommends controlled movement on private flights or vehicles for people who may have been exposed to Ebola, Frieden said.
We will, from this moment forward,ensure that no individual monitored for exposure undergoestravel in any way other than controlled movement, Frieden said Wednesday. He said the agency would work with state and local authorities to enforce this restriction.
It is still unclear how, exactly, Pham and Vinson were infected with Ebola, but Frieden suggested on Wednesday that it occurred during the days after Duncan was admitted to the hospital and before the CDC team arrived. Duncan was placed in isolation at the hospital on Sunday, Sept. 28, and the CDC did not arrive until Tuesday, Sept. 30, the day Duncan was diagnosed. Pham and Vinson both cared for Duncan during these days and had extensive contact with Duncan, who was vomiting and had diarrhea, Frieden said.
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Health-care worker with Ebola flew on commercial flight a day before being diagnosed
The experts had warned that fighting Ebola is hard, and Wednesdays drumbeat of bad news proved them correct. The day began with a bulletin about another health-care worker stricken with the deadly disease, and the news got worse with the revelation that she had flown with a slightly elevated temperature from Cleveland to Dallas on a crowded airliner barely 24 hours before her diagnosis.
Before she boarded that flight, the woman, identified by Ohio officials as Amber Joy Vinson, 29, informed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that she was running a temperature of 99.5 degrees, a federal official told The Washington Post.
That was below the 100.4-degree threshold in CDC guidelines for screening travelers who have been in Ebola-affected countries, and which triggers a secondary screening. The CDC did not prohibit Vinson from traveling on the plane back to Dallas, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue.
But on Wednesday, CDC Director Thomas Frieden said that Vinson should not have been flying anywhere given her possible exposure to Ebola at her workplace, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, which has been the epicenter of the crisis in the United States.
Vinson did not yet have the classic symptoms of a full-blown Ebola infection, such as vomiting and diarrhea, and so epidemiologists doubt that she spread the virus during the journey. Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids, which carry a higher viral load as the disease progresses.
A Frontier Airlines plane is reportedly being disinfected in Cleveland after a second nurse to become infected with Ebola flew on the plane from Cleveland to Dallas on Monday. (Reuters)
But Frontier Airlines and the CDC scrambled to contact the 132 passengers aboard Flight 1143, and the people on that flight joined a growing pool of people in the United States who may have been exposed to the virus in recent weeks.
As Wednesday ended, Americans had to be wondering when the U.S. outbreak will be contained, and whether public officials measured language and repeated reassurances are a gloss on a desperate and sometimes improvisational battle against a disease that in West Africa has killed more than 4,000 people.
The Vinson case highlighted how easily someone who is unknowingly infected can travel a great distance and potentially expose hundreds of new people. Scores of hospital staffers were involved in the treatment of the index patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died of Ebola at the hospital Oct.8.
It is now clear that Presbyterian Hospital experienced a catastrophic failure of infection control when it treated Duncan. He fell ill four days after arriving in Dallas by plane from Liberia, a trip that included connecting flights in Brussels and at Washington Dulles International Airport. When Duncan first went to the hospital, he was sent home despite a high fever and his stated travel history, a misstep that the hospital still has not fully explained. Two days later, on Sept.28, he returned, with his family fearing that he had Ebola.
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Health-care worker with Ebola was allowed to fly despite reporting slight fever
Last Updated Oct 15, 2014 7:02 PM EDT
The second health care worker to test positive for Ebola in Dallas traveled by air the day before presenting symptoms and being isolated, the CDC announced Wednesday.
The Cleveland Department of Public Health identified the health care worker as Amber Vinson. Officials said Vinson, a nurse in Dallas, was visiting family in northeast Ohio to prepare for her wedding.
CDC Director Tom Frieden said Wednesday the worker is currently in the process of being transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which has previously successfully treated two American Ebola patients without the disease spreading further. She boarded a flight to Atlanta Wed. afternoon.
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A second health care worker who treated Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital tested positive for the Ebola virus. Nurses empl...
The revelation has raised alarm about further spread of the disease, which is transmitted through body fluids such as blood and saliva after the victim starts showing symptoms.
In response to the latest Ebola case, the White House announced Tuesday that President Obama is calling off a planned trip to New Jersey and Connecticut and instead will convene Cabinet officials coordinating the government's Ebola response.
Amber Vinson
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2nd Dallas health care worker with Ebola took plane before symptoms appeared
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter Latest Infectious Disease News
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 15, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A second health care worker who helped treat a patient who died of Ebola last week at a Dallas hospital has tested positive for the disease, health officials said Wednesday morning.
The unidentified woman reported a fever Tuesday and was isolated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Health officials interviewed the woman to identify any people who may have had contact with her, and those contacts will be monitored, according to a statement from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
The preliminary Ebola diagnosis was made after a test late Tuesday at the state public health laboratory in Austin. A second test that's expected to confirm the diagnosis on Wednesday will come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The announcement of the second infected health care worker in Dallas came a day after the director of the CDC acknowledged that more health workers at the hospital could be infected. "It's possible we will see other people become ill," Dr. Thomas R. Frieden said at a Tuesday news briefing.
Both infected workers were part of a team of dozens of health care professionals and support staffers who took care of Thomas Eric Duncan, a native of Liberia who was the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. Liberia is one of three West African nations -- the others are Guinea and Sierra Leone -- that have been ravaged since the spring by the worst outbreak of Ebola in history.
Meanwhile, the first health care worker in Dallas to be diagnosed with Ebola, 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham, is in stable condition, and said in a statement Tuesday that she is doing well.
"I'm doing well and want to thank everyone for their kind wishes and prayers," Pham said.
On Tuesday, public health officials said they were actively monitoring 76 workers at Texas Health Presbyterian who may have been exposed to Ebola while treating Duncan. They may have been exposed to the Ebola virus through contact with either Duncan or his bodily fluids, Frieden said.
To prevent future exposures of health care workers, Frieden pledged to send a team of top CDC infection-control experts to any U.S. hospital that must treat an Ebola patient.
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Second Health Care Worker in Dallas Tests Positive for Ebola
They work long hours on their feet and risk their lives at work each day in return for a modest salary. And now America's nurses are at the front lines as the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history threatens to spread across the United States.
With more than four times as many registered nurses as physicians in the United States, nurses make up the bulk of hospital staff and serve as the primary providers for direct patient care, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.Terry Jones, assistant professor of nursing at the University of Texas at Austin, said treating infectious diseases like Ebola is merely part of the job.
On the other side of the disease is a real human being that is who we are there for. The virus is part of the package, Jones said. You have to accept that as part of the package and make your peace with it. Risk cannot be eliminated.
At least two health care workers who cared for an Ebola patient in Texas have contracted the deadly virus in recent days. Amber Joy Vinson, 26, and Nina Pham, 26, bothcontracted Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas before he died last week.
Vinson reported a fever on Tuesday and was isolated within 90 minutes of her temperature being taken, health officials said. Phamwas upgraded to good condition Tuesday, after being in isolation since Friday. She is the first person to contract Ebola in the U.S., and the case has triggered a CDC investigation to identify the cause of the infection.
The deadly virus is transmitted via contact with infected bodily fluids, according to Jones. That really is our job, and those bodily functions are part of the nursing care that we provide, said Jones, who has been a nurse for over 25 years.
CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden has said hes unsure how Pham was infected. What we need to do, is all take responsibility for improving the safety of those on the front lines. I feel awful that a health care worker became infected in the care of an Ebola patient. She was there trying to help the first patient survive, Frieden said during apress conference Monday.
Nursing is the nations largest health care profession and represents one of the largest sectors of the American workforce,according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Theyspend, on average, 72 percent of their time performing patient care and keeping patient care records, according to findings from the2008 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses.
On average, full-time registered nurses work over 40 hours per week, often working 12-hour shifts at a time and usually standing on their feet, Jones said. Nurses paid on an hourly wage basis are typically paid for overtime work, while salaried nurses do not receive overtime pay. The majority of registered nurses do not report working overtime, the national survey showed.
Nearly 85 percent of nurses working in hospitals are under the age of 30, and over 88 percent of staff nurses have five or fewer years of post-graduate experience, according to the survey published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.According to Jones, a nurses age isnt necessarily relevant to his or her level of experience. Many recent graduates are arguably most readily equipped and trained, she said.
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Ebola Outbreak 2014: Nurses, Health Care Workers Most At Risk
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Actress Angelina Jolies decision to have a preventative double mastectomy after learning she carried the faulty gene BRCA1 has heighted awareness for genetic testing. The Angelina Jolie Effect has lead to an increase in testing for the BRCA1/2 mutations among North American women, according to a recent Canadian study. But, is genetic testing for everyone? And, what questions should women consider?
Gail Vance, MD, FCAP, a pathologist and a clinical geneticist specializing in cancer genetics for inherited diseases at the Indiana University School of Medicine, is available for interviews for breast cancer awareness stories on what women need to know when considering genetic testing for the breast cancer. She is available to answer such questions as:
In lieu of all the recent advancements in genetic testing, what questions should patients be asking their doctors? Why is it important for a pathologist to be involved? How affordable are these tests? Are these tests covered by health care providers?
Dr. Vance also can offer tips for patients who are weighing this important decision, including: Talk with your physician about which genetic testing is appropriate for you Discuss the risks and benefits of genetic testing Learn which treatment is right for you. If you have diagnosed with cancer, an evaluation of your tumor will assist your oncologist in determining the appropriate treatment
Pathologists are the physicians who use laboratory medicine to examine cells, tissues, and body fluids to identify and diagnose disease, including breast cancer. They are involved in every aspect of health care. Pathologists provide the medical interpretation of genetic testing, which is critical to help patients make informed decisions about their health.
About Dr. Gail Vance: Gail H. Vance, MD, FCAP, is the Sutphin professor of Cancer Genetics and interim chairperson of the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. She also is director of the Division of Diagnostic Genomics and the Indiana Familial Cancer Program, which provides genetic counseling, risk assessment, and genetic testing to individuals with an elevated risk for developing cancer.
About the College of American Pathologists As the leading organization with more than 18,000 board-certified pathologists, the College of American Pathologists (CAP) serves patients, pathologists, and the public by fostering and advocating excellence in the practice of pathology and laboratory medicine worldwide. The CAPs Laboratory Improvement Programs, initiated 65 years ago, currently has customers in more than 100 countries, accrediting 7,600 laboratories and providing proficiency testing to 20,000 laboratories worldwide. Find more information about the CAP at cap.org. Follow CAP on Twitter: @pathologists.
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15-Oct-2014
Contact: Duska Anastasijevic newsbureau@mayo.edu 507-284-5005 Mayo Clinic @MayoClinic
Rochester, Minn. The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and the American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic Medicine (AANEM) offer a new guideline on how to determine what genetic tests may best diagnose a person's subtype of limb-girdle or distal muscular dystrophy. The guideline is published in the October 14, 2014, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the AAN.
Researchers reviewed all of the available studies on the muscular dystrophy, a group of genetic diseases in which muscle fibers are unusually susceptible to damage, as part of the process in developing the new guideline.
Doctors should conduct a thorough evaluation of symptoms, family history, ethnicity, and results of physical exam and certain lab tests to determine what genetic tests may be more appropriate to order.
"The guideline should help physicians arrive at the right diagnosis quicker so patients will not need to take unnecessary test", says Mayo Clinic neurologist Duygu Selcen, M.D., who was part of the multi-center research team led by Julie Bolen, PhD, MPH, from the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "This is particularly important because the muscle diseases are often hard to diagnose", adds Dr. Selcen.
There are several known subtypes of limbgirdle muscular dystrophy and distal muscular dystrophy. Experts continue to discover new subtypes and the guidance should help shorten the time to the right treatment.
While there is no cure for these disorders, complications can be managed. The guideline makes recommendations about treating and managing complications, which may include muscle symptoms, heart problems and breathing problems.
The guideline recommends that care for people with these disorders should be coordinated through treatment centers specializing in muscular dystrophy. People with these disorders should tell their doctors about any symptoms such as the heart beating too fast or skipping beats, shortness of breath and pain or difficulty in swallowing, as treatments may be available. People should also talk to their doctors about exercises that are safe.
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New guideline in genetic testing for certain types of muscular dystrophy
Muscular Dystrophy (MD) is well-known as a disease that progressively weakens muscles, leading to muscle spasms, difficulty walking, and eventually difficulty breathing. What many people dont know is that MD is actually a group of diseases, each of which can have different effects on the human body. Doctors are still discovering and classifying new forms of MD.
This week the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and the American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic Medicine (AANEM) issued guidelines meant to differentiate between MD disease types in preparation for genetic testing. The guidelines, published in this weeks Neurology, use symptoms, physical exams, lab tests, family history, and ethnicity to determine which genetic tests doctors should perform.
According to the guidelines lead author, Dr. Pushpa Narayanaswami, MD can often be difficult to diagnose. The guidelines should help doctors determine MD subtypes, leading to better treatments and avoiding unnecessary tests.
Looking at a range of clinical signs and symptoms such as which muscles are weak and if there is muscle wasting or enlargement, winging out of the shoulder blades, early signs of contracted limbs, rigidity of the neck or back, or heart or lung involvement can help doctors determine which genetic test to order, said Dr. Anthony Amato, senior author of the guidelines and a neurologist at Brigham and Womens Hospital. This in turn can shorten the time to diagnosis and start of treatment while helping avoid more extensive and expensive testing.
According to the guidelines MD treatment should take place at facilities that specialize in the disease. No cure for MD yet exists, so the guidelines also suggest that MD patients inform their doctors of treatable symptoms such as shortness of breath or irregular heartbeat and that they seek out safe exercises.
Before this publication, there were no care guidelines that covered both limb-girdle muscular dystrophy and distal MD and were based on the evidence, said Julie Bolen, team lead on the guidelines and a member of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We hope that this guideline will fill that gap for both the people who live with these rare disorders and the health care professionals who treat them.
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Newswise (NEW YORK - Oct. 15) A team led by researchers at The Rockefeller University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has explained the function of key immune protein and solved an international medical mystery, according to a letter published this week in the journal Nature.
In previous work, the research team lead had linked small changes in a key gene with a reduced ability to fight off a set of rare bacterial infections. Shortly afterward, a team of Chinese scientists reached out to say they had found three Chinese children with mutated versions of the same gene. Strangely, the Chinese children had no history of the severe bacterial infections, but instead had seizures and unusual calcium deposits in their brains.
The disconnect led to the discovery of an immune protein with two seemingly opposing roles: amplifying and tamping down aspects of an immune system response, according the study, published on Sunday, Oct. 12. The roles explained how the protein, or lack of it, could weaken response to an infectious disease in one instance, but contribute to the attack by the immune system on a persons own tissues (autoimmune disease) in another.
It has turned out that mutations in a single gene eliminates the immune protein ISG15, giving rise to two different problems: an inability to resolve harmful inflammation, which can lead to autoimmune disease, and susceptibility to infections caused by the tuberculosis bacterium and its cousins, said Jean-Laurent Casanova of the St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases at Rockefeller. By identifying the source of this genetic disorder, we have taken a first step toward finding treatments for those facing the autoimmune disease and severe TB-related infections it may produce.
When under attack, the immune system releases signaling proteins known as interferons, which further activate the bodys defenses. In previous research, Dusan Bogunovic, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Department of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and study author, had linked a lack of ISG15 to an unusual vulnerability to infections by mycobacteria, a group of common bacteria that include the tuberculosis bug.
He and colleagues had previously found children, one from Turkey, two from Iran, who became severely ill after receiving the anti-tuberculosis BCG vaccine. Normally, ISG15 protects against infection by mycobacteria by prompting the release of type 2 interferon, but all three children had two copies of a defective form of the ISG15 gene, and became infected by a TB-related component of the vaccine.
When Bogunovic and his colleagues reported this link publically, scientists in China reached out saying they had also seen loss-of-function mutations in three patients, all from a single Chinese family. But none of these three had had unexplained mycobacterial infections, such as those caused by the vaccine.
We asked why these children were patients; our Chinese colleagues said these kids had seizures, said Dr. Bogunovic. When we looked into their BCG vaccination history, we found these children, who were born at home in a remote village, never received their shots, so they never became sick.
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Tyranny Totalitarianism Past, Present Future: The Future
What is the likely shape of tyranny in the future? Will it resemble the soft-despotism of Tocqueville? Will it be Orwellian political thought-control? Or the...
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Gene Therapy - AAV Virus
Explore Research at the University of Florida: A common virus known as AAV, or Adeno-Associated Virus, has been described as boring because while it affect...
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What Is The Definition Of Human gene therapy
Visit our website for text version of this Definition and app download. http://www.medicaldictionaryapps.com Subjects: medical terminology, medical dictionar...
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Interview with a Futurist: Future Cities
Here futurist Klaus Mogensen (Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies) discusses what to consider when designing cities for the future.
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Futurist Flight Radio #24
We #39;re back with the Weekly Radio Show right before the People of Tomorrow Festival, where the New Radio Show Rising Intensity and the FF#25 will be released ...
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