Emerging Microbes Cause Alarm Among Scientists
nytimes.com
April 27, 2000
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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Four reported episodes of unusual infections around the world have illustrated the surprising potential of new microbes to emerge and old ones to return with a vengeance, scientists say.
The cases include a Nebraska farm boy who caught drug-resistant salmonella from infected cows that had been given antibiotics; Malaysian pig farmers killed by microbes caught from their animals, and hundreds of Italian schoolchildren sickened by a bacteria-contaminated salad of cold corn.
The fourth case was that of a diabetic Atlanta boy who needed bowel surgery twice for a severe bacterial infection contracted after he ate chitterlings at a holiday feast.
"The microbes are challenging us in ways we wouldn't have imagined 10 years ago and for which we're not prepared," said Dr. James Hughes, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Bacteria and viruses multiply quickly and can therefore evolve rapidly into more aggressive strains.
"On a good day, we hold them at bay," said Dr. Michael Osterholm of ican Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minn., an Internet information company focusing on infectious diseases. "On a bad day, they're winning."
Dr. Osterholm, who was the Minnesota state epidemiologist for 24 years, wrote an editorial on emerging infections in today's New England Journal of Medicine, which carried reports on the four outbreaks.
While Dr. Osterholm said it is impossible to predict what will be "the next H.I.V.," another deadly microbe is inevitable.
Dr. Hughes said it is only a matter of time until another deadly flu epidemic strikes the world.
Infectious diseases are the world's No. 1 killer, taking 13 million lives annually.
Deadly microbes that have appeared in the last quarter-century include legionnaires' disease, toxic shock syndrome, AIDS, rodent-borne hantaviruses, the airborne Ebola virus, Lyme disease, human cases of a new form of neurological illness linked to mad cow disease, in England, West Nile encephalitis in the New York City area and drug-resistant tuberculosis strains in many cities.
The experts cite many factors for the emergence -- and re-emergence -- of deadly germs, including increased international travel and shipment of food; population growth that has put people together in unsanitary conditions, and changes in how food is grown and handled.
Others factors include deteriorating public health resources in many areas; more people living with immune systems surpressed by AIDS, cancer, diabetes and organ transplants and increased use of antibiotics in people and livestock, which contributes to germs growing resistance to antibiotics. |
