A rising number of cases of dengue fever are being reported in Maylasia, according to a report by the country’s health minister, Datuk Liow Tiong Lai.

“We are seriously considering imposing a quarantine,” he said. “This was among the measures used by other countries to contain the problem.”

During the first 40 weeks of the year, there were 35,227 dengue cases, including 78 deaths nationwide, with 105 cases in the Sept 28 to Oct 4 week.

“Previously, there was a small percentage of dengue haemorrhagic fever which can kill, but now it is up to 50 percent of the dengue cases,” said the health minister.

Some patients were also infected with Chikungunya, spread by the same mosquito.

Several measures are being taken to contain the disease, including mass fogging, search-and-destroy teams sent to find mosquito breeding grounds, and a campaign to raise awareness. The health department also invited a virologist to capture the mosquitos and identify the type of dengue which was being spread here.

“We have to see if the joint effects (of Chikungunya and dengue) are causing the short and acute dengue fever and the deaths,” said the health minister.

There are also an increased number of EV-71 cases this year in Maylasia, authorities said.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Posted: October 31st, 2008 under Dengue Fever, Developing Diseases, Diseases, EV71.
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A four-year-old boy from Sibu, Maylasia died last month after showing symptoms of the hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). The disease was due to the deadly Enterovirus-71 (EV-71), the same virus that killed 30 children younger than five-years-old there a decade ago, deputy chief minister Tan Sri Dr. George Chan said.Dr. Chan said that the government had taken measures to prevent a serious outbreak and the public need fret.

“We are monitoring the situation very closely,” he said.The doctor told news conference there that two children aged two and three have been hospitalized at the Miri Hospital since Oct 14 after suffering serious illness of HFMD. Their condition was stable. Thus far this year, 6,414 HFMD cases have been reported in Sarawak with the Miri Hospital and Sibu Hospital handling most of the cases.

EV-71 on the rise in Southeast Asia.

Posted: October 30th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, EV71.
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Children are reportedly dying in eastern China from hand, foot and mouth disease. This is the country’s second outbreak of the powerful toddler virus this year, state media reported yesterday.

Doctors warned that the disease was epidemic in some parts of the coastal Fujian province, with 113 cases reported since the start of October.

The three latest victims were all less than one year old and from the same place, Jian’ou City, the government said.

An outbreak of the virus in southern China killed at least 42 people in April and May, and 27,500 additional cases, largely affecting toddlers, were reported.

Hand, foot and mouth disease is a frequent childhood illness, but the outbreaks in China have been linked with enterovirus 71 (EV71).

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

The cause of hand, foot, and mouth disease — the EV-71 virus.

Posted: October 28th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, EV71.
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The altruistic arm of Internet search engine pioneer Google, Inc. this week said it had given grants of more than $14 million to support physicians working in Southeast Asia and Africa to prevent the next pandemic.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google.org’s Predict and Prevent initiative is supporting efforts to identify “hot spots” where infectious diseases may emerge, discover new pathogens in animal and human populations, and react to outbreaks before they become global crises.

New lethal infectious diseases crop up every year, Google said, including variants of HIV/AIDS, bird flu and SARS, as well as drug-resistant strains of ancient scourges malaria and tuberculosis.

Google said three-quarters of new diseases are “zoonoses, meaning they’ve jumped from animals to humans.”

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Posted: October 21st, 2008 under Avian Flu, Clostridium difficile, Developing Diseases, EV71, Ebola Virus, Flesh-Eating Bacteria, HPV, Hendra Virus, Impaired Immunity, Legionnaires' Disease, MRSA, SARS, West Nile Virus.
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A four-year-old boy from Sibu, Maylasia died last month after showing symptoms of the Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD). The illness due to the deadly Enterovirus 71 (EV71), the same virus which killed 30 children below five years old in the state in 1997, Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Doctor George Chan said.

The doctor said that the government had taken measures to prevent a serious outbreak and the public need not worry about it. “We are monitoring the situation very closely ,” Chan said.

The doctor who told a news conference here that two children aged two and three had been warded at the Miri Hospital since Oct 14 after suffering serious illness of HFMD but their condition was stable.

So far, 6,414 HFMD cases had been reported in Sarawak with the Miri Hospital and Sibu Hospital registering 10 and seven admissions respectively.

The HFMD outbreak in 1997 was found to be due to EV71 and it was the first recognition of EV71 in Malaysia.

“The federal government has provided many incentives and the state government can consider to come up with our own incentives if more local farmers were keen on organic farming,” Chan said.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director, and Nancy Bruening, Executive Editor

Posted: October 16th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, EV71.
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How do doctors treat illnesses that elude diagnosis? Not very successfully.

Historically, physicians have done the best they can, but often because of lack of diagnosis they are clueless. Now, the National Institutes of Health is stepping in to help doctors with patients whose debilities are undiagnosed and unresponsive to treatment.

According to Dr. William H. Gahl, director of the new Undiagnosed Diseases Program at NIH, the program’s two main goals are: To provide medical answers to patients with mysterious conditions that have long eluded diagnosis; to advance medical knowledge about rare and common diseases.

In its beginning, the program will be funded primarily by the Office of Rare Diseases (ORD). More funding will be needed as the patient numbers grow. Dr. Gahl is unable to determine what will be needed in the future, but the Undiagnosed Diseases Program is scheduled to begin slowly, accepting one or two patients per week, with a projected number of 100 patients in the first year. Only after assessing the needs of these patients can a projected annual budget be formulated.

Infection Protection asked if the program would be conducted exclusively at NIH facilities, or if grants would be made available for outside studies. Dr. Gahl responded that at least for the present, all patients will be evaluated exclusively at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. “Of course,” he continues, “we are reliant upon referring physicians from around the country who are aware of cases that they will recommend to the program.”

Why begin the program now? The number of patients with undiagnosed diseases is not large. Dr. Gahl says the NIH has been tasked for decades to do clinical studies of diseases, often rare diseases, seeking new and better treatments for patients. He sees the new program as being timely and needed, and the Undiagnosed Diseases Program will bring to bear all of the considerable expertise of the researches at NIH, seeking to discover the origin of these illnesses and find a cure.                         

The research will take a broad view of the subject, rather than a narrowly targeted approach which is usual when working with a rare “known” disease. Researchers from many different specialties will be addressing the undiagnosed diseases problem. These include physicians experienced in “rheumatology, immunology, oncology, mental health, nephrology, hematology, ophthalmology, neurology, laboratory medicine, pain and palliative care, bone disorders, endocrinology, oncology, immunology, dermatology, primary immunodeficiency, dentistry, genetics, pathology, pulmonology, cardiology, primary immunodeficiency, internal medicine, pediatrics, and hepatology. All will consult on the cases and evaluations,” says Dr. Gahl.

Has the rapid increase of drug resistant microbes have a bearing on undiagnosed disease? Possibly so – Dr. Gahl and his team intend to leave no stone unturned in their search for diagnoses and treatment for heretofore undiagnosed diseases. 

– by Dr. Herb Marlow, PhD, Dallas Correspondent

Researchers probing diseases that elude diagnosis.

Posted: July 9th, 2008 under Clostridium difficile, Developing Diseases, EV71, Impaired Immunity, MRSA.
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An increasing number of children are being stricken with parotitis and encephalitis in Ho Chi Minh City, the capital of Vietnam. Outbreaks of hand, foot-mouth disease and petechial fever are not under control by health authorities, either. The city is a virtual incubator for infectious diseases today.

According to the city’s department of health, in the first four month of this year’s incidence of petechial fever is over 2,000 cases. That’s double the amount of the same period last year. Two children have succumbed to the disease this year.

The incidence of hand-foot-mouth disease is 755, of which seven died. Children under three are most at risk of the illness, which is transmitted directly through patients’ saliva, mucus, and feces.

“Hand-foot-mouth disease has occurred in all the city’s districts. If we don’t have good measure to control it, this could become an epidemic,” said Phan Van Nghiem, head of administration department of the city health department.

The department is establishing a steering committee to prevent and control hand-foot-mouth disease to cut back its incidence and mortality to a rate lower than last year’s. In 2007, 3,460 children were diagnosed with the illness. Sixteen of them died last year.

According to the city’s Pasteur Institute, the early start to the rainy season created “ideal conditions” for petechial fever, hand-foot-mouth disease and various respiratory diseases.

The city’s pediatrics hospital’s respiratory faculty is now admitting 140-150 patients every day, twice last week’s number, according to Dr. Tran Tuan Anh.

Another pediatric hospital in the city is admitting nearly 100 respiratory disease patients daily.About 80 per cent of the patients at both hospitals are under two years old, most of whom are diagnosed with bronchitis. Lung abscesses, pleurisy, asthma, and other complications from pneumonia are also frequent in these patients.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director and Nancy Breuning, Associate Managing Editor

Symptom of paratitis — swollen glands in the neck.

Posted: May 20th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, Diseases, EV71, Mumps.
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Chinese health officials this week confirmed the first child death of hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) in the capital of Beijing.

According to a report carried by the Xinhua News Service, Deng Xiaohong, spokeswoman of the Beijing Health Bureau, indicated that the child, a resident of Chaoyang District, had died on the way to a hospital last week.

She said that the child had tested positive for enterovirus 71 (EV71), a virus that has caused the majority of HFMD deaths overall in China.

The spokeswoman also indicated that another child from north China’s Hebei Province had died of HFMD at a Beijing hospital.

“Under the disease counting regulations of the Ministry of Health, the child from Hebei was not counted in Beijing’s disease toll,” Deng said.

Hebei Province neighbors Beijing, but had not previously reported any child death from the awful disease.

– by The Editors

Hand-foot-mouth disease claims another victim — a child — in China.

Posted: May 14th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, EV71, Impaired Immunity.
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The U.S. government has offered to assist China in its battle against a viral infection that has killed 34 children, and afflicted thousands of others.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt is making a trip to Beijing next week and plans to discuss health issues with Chinese officials, with the outbreaks of “hand, foot, and mouth disease expected to feature prominently,” U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, Susan Stevenson, says.

The scope of infections brings to mind the SARS epidemic of 2003, when China was criticized internationally for trying to conceal the emergence of the disease. American health experts have previously helped study and control infectious diseases like SARS in China.

The most recent deaths happened in the central province of Anhui, where 22 children have died of hand, foot, and mouth disease, the provincial health bureau said on its Internet site.

The government said serious cases, however, were on the decline in Fuyang city, the site of the most infections and where the first wave of outbreaks was reported.

As of late Thursday, the number of reported cases countrywide jumped to 24,932, the official Xinhua News Agency said — up 25 percent from 19,962 a day earlier.  New cases have popped up from Guangdong province in the south to Jilin province in the northeast, along with major cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

– by The Editors

A positive staining of EV71.

Posted: May 9th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, EV71, Impaired Immunity, SARS.
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A viral epidemic that has killed dozens of children across China has not yet peaked, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Health officials in China have been struggling to contain EV71, an intestinal virus that has killed 22 children in Fuyang, a city in China’s eastern Anhui province, and caused two deaths in Guangdong province.

EV71 has also been traced in outbreaks of hand, foot and mouth disease in Hunan, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, that have infected thousands of kids across China.

But hand, foot and mouth disease caused by EV71 can cause viral meningitis and death, according to the U.S. National Centre for Infectious Diseases.

There is no vaccine or antiviral agent available to treat EV71, a non-polio enterovirus which is spread mostly through contact with infected blisters or faeces and can cause high fever, paralysis and swelling of the brain.

WHO’s China representative Hans Troedsson told the news media, “I think we will see the peak before the Olympics.”

The EV71 virus had killed children in Anhui in early March, but a delay in reporting the outbreak to the public until last weekend triggered criticism in the media, which said local government officials should be sacked. The criticism was reported on earlier by Infection Protection.

A total of 12 children remain in critical condition, and more than 600 are in hospital in Fuyang alone, some with damaged brains, hearts and lungs.

China has issued a national alert in a move to stop the spread of the virus, shuttering kindergartens and sending officials to visit nurseries and primary schools and inform staff on infection protection techniques.

– by Gene J. Koprowski, MA, Editorial Director

Chinese physician dons mask to treat child infected with EV71 virus.

Posted: May 5th, 2008 under Developing Diseases, EV71, Impaired Immunity.
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