MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By FILADELFO ALEMAN and MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN – “CHICHIGALPA, Nicaragua (AP) — Jesus Ignacio Flores started working when he was 16, laboring long hours on construction sites and in the fields of his country’s biggest sugar plantation.

Three years ago his kidneys started to fail and flooded his body with toxins. He became too weak to work, wracked by cramps, headaches and vomiting.

On Jan. 19 he died on the porch of his house. He was 51. His withered body was dressed by his weeping wife, embraced a final time, then carried in the bed of a pickup truck to a grave on the edge of Chichigalpa, a town in Nicaragua’s sugar-growing heartland, where studies have found more than one in four men showing symptoms of chronic kidney disease.

A mysterious epidemic is devastating the Pacific coast of Central America, killing more than 24,000 people in El Salvador and Nicaragua since 2000 and striking thousands of others with chronic kidney disease at rates unseen virtually anywhere else. Scientists say they have received reports of the phenomenon as far north as southern Mexico and as far south as Panama.

Last year it reached the point where El Salvador’s health minister, Dr. Maria Isabel Rodriguez, appealed for international help, saying the epidemic was undermining health systems…

In Nicaragua, the number of annual deaths from chronic kidney disease more than doubled in a decade, from 466 in 2000 to 1,047 in 2010, according to the Pan American Health Organization, a regional arm of the World Health Organization. In El Salvador, the agency reported a similar jump, from 1,282 in 2000 to 2,181 in 2010.

Farther down the coast, in the cane-growing lowlands of northern Costa Rica, there also have been sharp increases in kidney disease, Wesseling said, and the Pan American body’s statistics show deaths are on the rise in Panama, although at less dramatic rates.

While some of the rising numbers may be due to better record-keeping, scientists have no doubt they are facing something deadly and previously unknown to medicine.” Read more.

Here’s an update on this story …

By Maryn McKenna – “A newly identified disease is moving rapidly through livestock in Europe and has authorities both worried and puzzled. The disease, dubbed Schmallenberg virus for a town in west-central Germany where one of the first outbreaks occurred, makes adult animals only mildly ill, but causes lambs, kids and calves to be born dead or deformed.

The United Kingdom’s Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AVHLA) said today that the virus has been found on 29 farms in England; in the past few weeks they found it in sheep, but today announced that they have identified it in cattle as well. In mainland Europe, it has been identified on several hundred farms in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, and most recently in France. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control has said that the new virus’s closest relatives do not cause disease in humans — but that other more distantly related viruses do:

The new virus belongs to the Bunyaviridae family, genus Orthobunyavirus, Simbu serogroup (preliminary information, based solely on genetic information)… Genetic characterisation has shown that the new virus is closest to the following Simbu serogroup viruses: Shamonda-, Aino- and Akabane-viruses, which do not cause disease in humans.

However, at least 30 orthobunyaviruses are zoonotic and may cause disease in humans, with symptoms ranging from mild to severe — e.g. La Crosse encephalitis virus, California Encephalitis virus, Cache Valley virus, Batai virus, Tahyna virus, Inkoo virus, Snowshoe Hare virus, Iquitos virus and Oropouche virus.

The viral vector — the thing which spreads it — is believed to be midges, small flying biting insects (Culicoides) and maybe also mosquitoes (Culicidae). The disease doesn’t pass from adult animal to another animal, but apparently does from a mother animal to its offspring in utero, and that is why it is showing up now: It’s lambing season. With Europe enduring its coldest winter in decades, there are no virus-carrying insects flying around now. Instead, the animals that are giving birth to deformed and dead offspring were infected last summer and fall. No one has been able to say so far whether the organism can survive in insects over the winter (the way West Nile virus, for instance, may).” Read more.

“A 36-year-old nurse practitioner has been diagnosed as the first adult to have the mysterious Tourette-like illness that has spread across a rural New York town.

Marge Fitzsimmons, who works with developmentally disabled patients and has no immediate ties to the town’s high school at the centre of the outbreak, has had to stop going to work because her body tics and twitches have gotten so severe that she can no longer work with her patients.

Details of her condition emerged today as researchers offered a new explanation for the strange symptoms that have been diagnosed in 14 teenage girls and one teenage boy.

Doctors have singled out the possibilty of paediatric acute-onset neuropsychaitric syndrome, or PANS, as a solution.

However, the new addition of an adult to the list of victims is likely to cast doubt on the theory that the outbreak is caused by a condition prevalent in children.

‘It started out with sudden head jerks in the middle of October. The motor tics wouldn’t stop, and the vocal tics started, and I went to one of the bosses and said I have to go,’ Ms Fitzsimmons told NBC News.

‘When it first started I thought maybe I’m going crazy.

‘As an adult, I can’t imagine these teenagers going through this and for anyone to think that they’re faking it at all. Try living a day in their shoes.’

Researchers are now looking into a new explanation – that infections caused by bacteria or viruses can cause also infect the brain, leading to onsets of Tourette’s and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

News of the adult case comes after fifteen teenagers were of the affected who attend Le Roy High School in Genesee County, New York State. Only one boy has been affected, the other 14 sufferers are girls.” Read more.

“Coughing and sneezing on crowded trains and buses can spread deadly flesh-eating superbugs, commuters are being warned.

The bacteria are more virulent than the infamous hospital MRSA, can affect otherwise healthy people and are spreading across Britain.

They can be transmitted through skin-to-skin contact and hugging as well as sneezing and coughing.

One strain, called USA300, can lead to blood poisoning or a form of pneumonia that eats away at lung tissue.

The bacteria are usually resistant to several types of antibiotics and can cause large boils on the skin.

Chris Williams, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Birmingham, said: ‘It breaks down tissue. If it gets into your heart, bacteria can get into your bloodstream and take hold of different parts of your body. That could lead to death quite easily.’

The dangers of the ‘community- acquired’ superbugs are raised in a new study, examining the way they spread. Researcher Dr Ruth Massey said USA300 was ‘causing huge problems in America and is being reported here increasingly’.

She added: ‘These community- acquired strains seem to be good at affecting healthy people – they seem to be much better than the hospital ones at causing disease.’

Dr Massey said there were 1,000 cases of so-called PVL-positive community-acquired MRSA in England in the last year, of which 200 were USA300 strains.” Read more.

“The pathogens thrive in warm, moist environments. They feel comfortable in people’s armpits, in the genital area and in the nasal mucous membranes. Their hunting grounds are in the locker rooms of schools and universities, as well as in the communal showers of prisons and health clubs.

The bacteria are transmitted via the skin, through towels, clothing or direct body contact. All it takes is a small abrasion to provide them with access to a victim’s bloodstream. Festering pustules develop at the infection site, at which point the pathogens are also capable of corroding the lungs. If doctors wait too long, patients can die very quickly.

This is precisely what happened to Ashton Bonds, a 17-year-old student at Staunton River High School in Bedford County, in the US state of Virginia. Ashton spent a week fighting for his life — and lost. This is probably what also happened to Omar Rivera, a 12-year-old in New York, who doctors sent home because they thought he was exhibiting allergy symptoms. He died that same night.

The same thing almost happened at a high school in the town of Belen, New Mexico. Less than two weeks ago, a cheerleader at the school was hospitalized after complaining about an abscess. Twelve other female students had been afflicted with suspicious rashes. All the students tested positive for a bacterium that the US media has dubbed the “superbug.”

The school administration in Belen believes that the bacterium was spread on mats in the school’s fitness and wrestling rooms. The facility was thoroughly disinfected 40 times, and yet the fear remains.

Fears of a Pandemic

Microbiologists refer to this bacterium as community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or ca-MRSA. The terrifying thing about it is its resistance to almost all common antibiotics, which complicates treatment. And, in contrast to the highly drug-resistant hospital-acquired MRSA (ha-MRSA) strains, which primarily affect the elderly and people in hospitals and nursing homes, ca-MRSA affects healthy young people. The bacterium has become a serious health threat in the United States. Doctors have already discovered it in Germany, although no deaths have been attributed to it yet in the country.

The two bacteria, ha-MRSA and ca-MRSA, are only two strains from an entire arsenal of pathogens that are now resistant to almost all available antibiotics. Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, one of the most powerful miracle weapons ever produced by modern medicine threatens to become ineffective.

The British medical journal The Lancet warns that the drug-resistant bacteria could spark a ‘pandemic.’ And, in Germany, the dangerous pathogens are no longer only feared ‘hospital bugs’ found in intensive care units (ICUs). Instead, they have become ubiquitous.” Read more.

By Louise Gray – “A new virus, that causes abortions and birth deformities in farm animals, has been found in Britain for the first time.

Schmallenberg virus (SBV), which is spread by midges and affects cattle, sheep and goats, has been formally identified on four sheep farms in Norfolk, Suffolk and East Sussex.

At the moment farmers are not required to notify the authorities so animals with the disease may end up in the food chain, however it is not thought to be harmful to humans.

Farmers are concerned because of the distressing nature of finding animals with dead or deformed young and the possibility the virus may be spread further as the weather warms.

Vets believe the virus was carried over to eastern England via midges from the northern Europe, where it was first identified last August.

The disease first appeared in cattle in the Netherlands and Germany in August 2011. Clinical signs included fever, reduced milk yield and diarrhoea.

More recently, from November, the virus has been associated with reports of miscarriages and stillbirths associated with congenital abnormalities affecting mainly sheep but also cattle and goats, in northern Europe.

Russia and Mexico have banned imports of sheep and goat meat and live animals from the Netherlands and China has asked for more information.

If Britain loses its export market it will cost the country billions.” Read more.

AAP – “Cases of a deadly mosquito-borne virus increased dramatically in Australia last year, with further outbreaks possible this summer.

Three people died and there were 16 confirmed cases of Murray Valley encephalitis virus in 2011, according to an article in the Medical Journal of Australia.

There were no cases reported in 2010 and just four confirmed cases of the virus in 2009, data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System shows.

The virus is endemic in northern Australia but re-emerged in southeastern Australia last year, according to author Dr Jack Richards, of the Victorian Infectious Disease Service at Royal Melbourne Hospital, and his co-authors.

The increase in cases came in the wake of significant regional flooding, with deaths occurring in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

‘The risk during this summer and the coming autumn remains uncertain, especially in areas that remain flooded,’ the report said.

‘Recent circumstances remind us of the limited information we have about this disease, the challenges of clinical management and the need to prepare for future outbreaks.’

The virus, which causes brain inflammation, is fatal in about 15 to 30 per cent of cases, with long-term neurological problems occurring in 30 to 50 per cent of survivors.

Just 40 per cent of sufferers make a complete recovery.” Read more.

“The death toll in Mexico from an outbreak of A(H1N1) swine flu has hit nine, with 573 cases detected, officials say.

The strain represents some 90 percent of detected cases of influenza in the country, the health ministry said in a statement.

The number of cases reported was up sharply from Thursday, when health officials said 333 had been identified. Authorities have brushed aside suggestions of a new health emergency but have begun tracking new cases since December 2011.

The first outbreak of the A(H1N1) virus occurred in April, 2009 in Mexico and the United States, and quickly became a global pandemic that claimed the lives of 17,000 people. In Mexico alone, more than 1250 people died.

The World Health Organization declared the pandemic over in 2010 as the flu returned to typical seasonal patterns.” Source – Herald Sun.

N.C. reports another swine flu death – “Health officials say a 55-year-old man diagnosed with swine flu died this week. The man was admitted to a Transylvania County hospital on Monday with pneumonia and flu-like symptoms. He died on Tuesday, county Health Department Director Steve Smith said. Tests confirmed the man had H1N1 swine flu, Smith said Friday. But he said further tests are needed to determine if the flu caused his death. The man’s name was not released. Officials said he was the first confirmed death associated with swine flu in the western North Carolina county.” Read more.

China reports second bird flu death in a month – “China on Sunday reported its second bird flu fatality in a month following deaths last week in Vietnam and Cambodia. The patient died Sunday in Guizhou province in the southwest after being hospitalized on Jan. 6, the health ministry said in a brief statement. It said the flu was highly pathogenic but gave no indication whether it was confirmed to be the H5N1 strain. Mainland officials told Hong Kong authorities the patient was a 39-year-old man who reported having no contact with poultry, government-run Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK said. It gave no other details of his identity.” Read more.