Posted on 10/16/2012 4:49:34 PM PDT by nuconvert
Another 19 people have been diagnosed with fungal meningitis linked to possibly tainted vials of a steroid medication, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday, bringing the total number of cases to 231.
The CDC said there were two additional cases of infection in joints after a steroid injection but these were not confirmed as meningitis, bringing the total of infections nationwide to 233.
The death toll from the unprecedented outbreak was unchanged at 15, the CDC said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
My granddaughter was just diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, three days after visiting a major medical center for a post-op check-up. Is this just the tip of the iceberg? Can you only get meningitis from a direct injection or can it be transferred from active cases to the general population prior to diagnosis?
Mine, as well. However, that was only mentioned in passing in the first article I saw on the incident. After that, it was omitted, including the last ProMed posting I saw. Now, I am reading about greedy independent compounders who have put others out of business by providing products demanded by patients (and therefore by their physicians) and who must receive more regulation.
Had these injectables contained ingredients normally present in the products available from the large, extremely regulated pharmaceutical manufacturers, would that have protected them from Aspergillus contamination?
I like compounding pharmacists. I had a dog who would not take doxycycline in any form until my vet worked with a compounder to create a liquid formulation very high in chicken flavor. It was obscenely expensive, but it saved my dog from Lymes.
It’s fungal, so unrelated to your granddaughter’s case. It’s not communicable, and most of the harm is in being directly injected into a part of the body the immune system doesn’t protect effectively, a “sealed space” of sorts.
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