MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

India Times – “LONDON: The World Health Organization said on Monday it is too soon to say whether there could be an outbreak of a SARS-like killer respiratory disease after health officials in Britain announced they detected a related virus in a severely ill patient from the Middle East.

British officials alerted WHO on Saturday of the new virus in a man transferred from Qatar for treatment in London. He had recently travelled to Saudi Arabia, where another man died of a similar illness earlier this year.

The man in the new case was sickened by a coronavirus , from a family of viruses which causes most common colds but also includes the virus that causes SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome . In 2003, SARS killed some 800 people, mostly in Asia, in a brief epidemic.

‘It’s still very early days,’ said Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman. ‘At the moment we have two sporadic cases and there are still a lot of holes to be filled in.’ Hartl said it was unclear how the virus is spread and there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. for a history of travel in Saudi Arabia. SARS was first spread to humans from civet cats in China. Hartl said no country has so far reported any similar cases to WHO.

Other experts said it was unclear how dangerous the virus is. ‘We don’t know if this is going to turn into another SARS or if it will disappear into nothing,’ said Michael Osterholm, a flu expert at the University of Minnesota . He said it was crucial to determine the ratio of severe to mild cases.

SARS hit over 30 countries worldwide after spreading” Read more.

AFP – “Saudi health authorities downplayed Tuesday the impact of a possible outbreak of a virus from the family of deadly SARS on its forthcoming Hajj pilgrimage, stressing that the cases remain rare.

Pilgrims have begun to arrive in Saudi Arabia for the ritual that represents the world’s largest annual gathering as some two million faithful are expected to descend on the Muslim holy city of Mecca for the hajj which peaks in late October.

‘There have been two cases of flu over a period of time. This is normal,’ said health ministry spokesman Khaled al-Mirghalani.

‘There are no changes to the conditions put by the health ministry to pilgrims,’ he said, adding that authorities remain vigilant.

The undersecretary for preventive medicine at the Saudi health ministry, Ziyad Memish, said the ‘virus has been in the kingdom for three months.’

He, however, insisted the situation was ‘stable and no new cases have been recorded.’ Memish said the kingdom is not planning to impose new preventive measures on pilgrims.

The virus has caused the death of a Saudi national and has left a Qatari man in serious conditions at a London hospital, said the World Health Organization (WHO).

The 49-year-old Qatari was admitted to an intensive care unit in Doha on September 7 suffering from acute respiratory infection and kidney failure before being transferred to Britain by air ambulance on September 11, the WHO said.

The WHO confirmed the illness was in the coronavirus family but was not SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which swept out of China in 2003, killing more than 800 people worldwide.” Read more.

Saudi Authorities Detain Nearly 400 Women On Hajj Pilgrimage For Not Having Male Escort – “Nigerian officials say 398 Muslim women pilgrims travelling to Makkah were temporarily held at a Saudi Arabian airport for travelling without male relatives. A spokesman for Nigeria’s National Hajj Commission said Saudi authorities held the Nigerian women between Thursday and Monday at King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah. Spokesman Uba Mana said the women were allowed to proceed with their pilgrimage Monday following diplomatic intervention. He said Saudi authorities held them for not travelling with a male relative due to a ‘communication gap’. He said an agreement between the countries exempts Nigerian women from requiring a male relative to escort them during the Hajj pilgrimage, which costs about $4,000 per person.” Read more.

RSOE EDIS – “Residents in the Concho Valley area off of Highway 61 noticed hundreds of prairies dogs had died in a short span of time. Prairie dogs are considered sentinel animals to the fact that plague is in the area. Officials with Arizona Game and Fish were notified by an alert resident and further contact was made with health officials from Apache and Coconino counties, the state health department, as well as experts at Northern Arizona University. NAU is home to the Microbial Genetics and Genomics Center and has been a key player in testing for plague for the past 10 years. The lab sent a team to the area to trap fleas in the prairie dog holes that had recent die-offs. The team’s first visit was on August 27 and results from the lab testing showed positive for plague.” Read more.

Flashback: Colorado: 7-year-old Girl Contracts “Black Death” Bubonic Plague – “A 7-year-old girl is recovering in a Colorado hospital after being diagnosed with the Black Death, scientifically known as the bubonic plague. The parents of 7-year-old Sierra Jane Downing thought she had the flu when she felt sick days after camping in southwest Colorado. When she had a seizure, her father rushed her to the local hospital in Pagosa Springs. The emergency room doctor who saw Sierra Jane for the seizure and a 107-degree fever late Aug. 24 wasn’t sure what was wrong either, and called other hospitals before the girl was flown to Denver. A pediatric doctor racing to save the girl’s life at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children got the first inkling that she had bubonic plague. Dr. Jennifer Snow first suspected the rare disease after factoring in the girl’s symptoms, a history of where she’d been and an online journal’s article on a teen with similar symptoms.” Read more.

Flashback: Plague Confirmed in Oregon Man – “Health officials have confirmed that an Oregon man has the plague after he was bitten while trying to take a dead rodent from the mouth of a stray cat. The unidentified man, who is in his 50s, remained in critical condition Friday at a Bend hospital. His illness marks the fifth case of plague in Oregon since 1995. State public health veterinarian Dr. Emilio DeBess says the man was infected when he was bitten by the stray his family had befriended. The cat died and its body is being sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for testing.” Read more.

Flashback: Friend of Oregon Man Diagnosed With Plague Also Becomes Infected – “An Oregon woman was diagnosed with the bubonic plague, once called “black death,” over the summer and has since recovered. The woman tried to help her friend save the life of a choking cat, health officials said Friday. Her friend Paul Gaylord, also made headlines in June for contracting the rare, dangerous disease. The central Oregon woman, who asked not to be identified, has recovered since contracting the disease in June. She was treated after showing early symptoms.” Read more.

Flashback: California: Campground Squirrel Tests Positive for Plague – “A ground squirrel found at the Cedar Grove Campground on Palomar Mountain recently tested positive for plague, according to County of San Diego vector control officials. The squirrel was trapped during routine monitoring at the campground. Environmental health officials are now warning the public to take precautions to protect themselves from possible exposure to the disease when camping and visiting parks. ‘Set up tents away from squirrel burrows, do not feed the squirrels and warn your children not to play with squirrels,’ said Jack Miller, Director of the Department of Environmental Health.” Read more.

By Amy Maxmen – “This year is on track to be the worst on record for West Nile virus in the United States. As of 11 September, more than 2,600 new cases, including 118 deaths, had been reported from across the country to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Symptoms of the mosquito-borne disease range from none (in most people) to life-threatening brain inflammation, and it can leave survivors with long-term disabilities including paralysis and fatigue. Researchers are now investigating suggestions that even mild infections may leave another lasting burden — kidney disease.

‘We are early in our understanding, but this really worries me,’ says Kristy Murray, an epidemiologist and clinical researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who has found hints that the virus may persist in the kidney long after the initial infection. This week she is moving her work on the long-term consequences of West Nile to a new biosecurity-level-3 laboratory at nearby Texas Children’s Hospital, where she will explore a link between the virus and kidney disease.

Researchers agree that the claim needs to be investigated. ‘If Murray’s findings are true, we have to think about what to do with all of these people with mild infections,’ says William Reisen, an entomologist at the Center for Vectorborne Diseases at the University of California, Davis. But Murray is also facing scepticism, which she hopes to address in the latest phase of her research.

Murray’s quest began at a meeting of West Nile survivors in Texas in 2009, where a man in his early fifties who had recovered from a 2003 infection announced that he had kidney disease. He was dead within a year. To Murray, his illness brought to mind studies in which researchers had detected and cultured the virus in kidney tissue from laboratory animals long after they were infected with West Nile.

Murray collected urine samples from 25 survivors of West Nile and found that five had viral RNA in their urine well after they had been infected1, suggesting that the virus might have established itself in their kidneys. To examine whether the virus might harm kidneys over time, Murray’s team then looked for indicators of long-term kidney disease, such as excess protein in the urine, in samples from 139 people, most of whom were infected with the 2003 strain of the virus. She reported2 in July that 40% of that group showed signs of long-term kidney disease.” Read more.

The Canadian Press – “Animal health researchers are watching what appears to be mounting evidence of the spread of a potentially dangerous parasite in coyotes, foxes and other animals in Canada.

That’s a concern, they suggest, because the parasite, a tapeworm, can on occasion spill over from its wild animal hosts to infect dogs and humans.

And while people aren’t the tapeworm’s preferred hosts, a growing number of human cases are being seen in Europe and parts of the world where the parasite is more established…

The researchers are keen not to incite undue alarm. It would appear, they say, that the risk to Canadians is low. But they say the situation bears continued scrutiny, especially in light of the fact that urban sprawl in cities like Calgary is leading to closer contact between coyotes and domestic animals.

‘It seems like there is a real route for coyotes to bring this into the cities and into dog parks,’ says Emily Jenkins, a professor in the University of Saskatchewan’s department of veterinary microbiology and school of public health.

‘I think there’s a need for a risk assessment. And I think there’s a need for enhanced surveillance — if only to get baselines to say, ‘Oh, yeah, this is the prevalence now’ and ‘Oh, look, it’s not changing’ or ‘Oh, look, it is.’

‘But getting that on the radar of a particular public or animal health agency is challenging.’

The parasite is called Echinococcus multilocularis. Scientists sometimes call it E. multi for short. When it infects people, the parasite causes a condition called alveolar echinococcosis, with tumour-like cysts forming in the liver, lungs or sometimes the brain.

A study published in 2010 in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases estimated that about 18,200 human cases occur globally every year, with 90 per cent of them recorded in China…

But the range of the parasite — which is a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon — is expanding.” Read more.

“ATLANTA (AP) — Researchers have identified a mysterious new disease that has left scores of people in Asia and some in the United States with AIDS-like symptoms even though they are not infected with HIV.

The patients’ immune systems become damaged, leaving them unable to fend off germs as healthy people do. What triggers this isn’t known, but the disease does not seem to be contagious.

This is another kind of acquired immune deficiency that is not inherited and occurs in adults, but doesn’t spread the way AIDS does through a virus, said Dr. Sarah Browne, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

She helped lead the study with researchers in Thailand and Taiwan where most of the cases have been found since 2004. Their report is in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

‘This is absolutely fascinating. I’ve seen probably at least three patients in the last 10 years or so’ who might have had this, said Dr. Dennis Maki, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

It’s still possible that an infection of some sort could trigger the disease, even though the disease itself doesn’t seem to spread person-to-person, he said.

The disease develops around age 50 on average but does not run in families, which makes it unlikely that a single gene is responsible, Browne said. Some patients have died of overwhelming infections, including some Asians now living in the U.S., although Browne could not estimate how many.” Read more.