Is a Norovirus Sickening Harvard Faculty Club?

Today I found an article on Boston.com entitled "Possible Norovirus closes Harvard Faculty Club." The article was written by Travis Anderson and was published on April 2, 2010. The article talks about how a spokeswoman for the schools hospitality and dining services program, Crista Martin, sent out an email saying that the club in Cambridge which had been closed a week ago due to a possible norovirus outbreak would remain closed until a cleaning crew sanitized the entire building.

Noroviruses are a group of viruses that cause gastroenteritis in people. Gastroenteritis is an inflammation of the lining of the stomach and intestines. Because of this, the article goes on to discuss how many sick patrons had reported syptoms of nausea and diarrhea. The article also talks a lot about the symptoms of a norovirus and says common norovirus symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and some stomach cramping. Infections can spread by eating food or drinking liquids contaminated with the virus, touching contaminated surfaces or objects before putting fingers in one’s mouth, and having direct contact with an infected person. Martin adds that closing the club was a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of everyone. Louise Rice, director of public health nursing for the city of Cambridge said "more than 10 people became ill after eating at the Faculty Club but, officials have not yet determined whether they were infected with a norovirus." I thought this quote was important because it gives the reader of the article a better insight into what the people going through this are actually experiencing.

The reason the article quickly grabbed my attention was because it talked about a lot of similar things we have studied in class and it interested me to learn more about how what we are learning in class connects to the real world today. It talked about viruses and illnesses which we have definitely covered a lot in class. It also talked about the symptoms of this specific virus which was cool because we talk a lot in class about the symptoms of each ailment we study. This article also connected to a project I did in my spanish class a few weeks ago about the earthquake in Haiti and about all of the health issues that came along with it. Our assignment was to make a PSA in Spanish about all the horrible things happening to the people in Haiti and what we can do to help. A lot of the ways we can help included donating money to organizations which study viruses and diseases such as the CDC, or Center for Disease Control. I thought this was a cool connection because it shows how many different areas of study the CDC is involved in and all of the ways is helps our world as a community.

I really enjoyed this article in general because there isn't really any controversy. The article simply gives insights to what is happening in our surrounding community, and the people involved fill the reporters in on only the information that they know. Even the people affected still don't know all of the details and if it is even definitely a norovirus which I think is pretty cool. Below is the link to a video from Youtube which gives a great explanation as to what a norovirus is, the symptoms is causes, and methods of transmission.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n_3xQ-i_4A

Here's the link to the article in the Boston Globe if you want to check it out:

http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/04/02/possible_norovirus_closes_harvard_faculty_club/

Highest rates for H1N1 vaccination in the Northeast!

In the article "CDC: New England tops in swine flu vaccinations" written by Mike Stobbe, an AP medical writer, on April 1 2010, the outline of swine flu reception is given. The article which appeared in Rhode Island Newspapers goes into the statistics of what percentage of people per US state have been vaccinated for the swine flu. The North East has the highest percentages followed in last place by Southeast and Central areas of the country. He goes into detail about what may be causing the different percentages across the country. He suggests that since the swine flu hit the south earlier they already needed the vaccine when it wasn't available and many now have no desire to get it since it seems to have already "passed though." By contrast the H1N1 flu hit the North East just as the vaccinations were becoming available, which could have caused their high reception rate. The link is below.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2010/04/01/cdc_new_england_tops_in_swine_flu_vaccinations/

I found this article to be very interesting especially as people are less and less interested in getting vaccinated in our own school. I guess it really is all about supply and demand. Now that people arn't seeing "swine flu" everywhere they don't see a need to be vaccinated, even as a precaution. I think the timing of the epidemic in particular areas of the country coupled with the idea of supply and demand is what caused the big differences in percentages. Another detail that the article goes into I find interesting. Depending on what role the local government took in encouraging vaccinations also played a big part on the percentages of people who decided to take the precaution. It makes sense that it would be more widely publicized in the North Eastern states since, by the time it had reached us, we had time to see the damaging effects it can have on other people within our country. I still have not been vaccinated and I think that many people who haven't probably share the belief that the epidemic has passed for the year and if we didn't get it by now, we never will. This attitude is similar to that which is detremental for polio carriers. Even if some people decline to get vaccinated they run the risk of infecting other people. So if the whole country does not get vaccinated there is a chance that the disease could continue to spread rapidy. Unlike polio, however, the signs of infection are almost always visable.

Blogging is Back!

After a hiatus in third quarter, student blogging for "History and Science of Epidemic Disease" is back. Infectious disease is part of the human experience and nearly every day epidemic disease is in the news.

A quick search of the Boston Globe online turned up a number of recent articles directly related to what we have been studying this year. Here is a very recent one of note:

"Being Perfect Isn't Everything" by Brian MacQuarie, Boston Globe, April 1, 2010.
http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/04/01/being_perfect_isnt_everything/

This article focuses on the perfect attendance record of Justin LaBatte, a Senior at Amesbury High School. LaBatte didn't miss a single day in his 13 years of public schooling! Brian and his mom want recognition while school officials are concerned with rewarding such a feat. Administrators simply do not want to encourage students who are sick with the flu or other infectious diseases to come to school.

Are attendance awards a thing of the past? (I actually remember the student who won the perfect attendance award at my high school senior awards assembly! Scholarship money went with the award.) Do schools and parents need to do more to make sure that students and teachers stay home when they are sick (especially during flu season)? How might our school address this especially considering the H1N1 district preparedness plan presented by Superintendent Doherty?

Women Reluctant to Take Drugs Promising to Prevent Cancer

When Lowering the Odds of Cancer isn’t Enough, written by Tara Parker-Pope, was published in The New York Times on December 14, 2009. In this article, two pills named tamoxifen and raloxifene are discussed. These pills have been proven to prevent cancer in people who are at a high risk of getting it. Despite this good news, most women who are asked to consider taking the drug refuse and would rather have surgeries to remove their breasts and ovaries to prevent cancer. They do not want to take tamoxifen because it has serious side effects. In a group of 1,000 women, 21 would likely be diagnosed with endometrial cancer; a cancer of the uterine lining that is easily treated if caught early. 21 more women are likely to develop blood clots, 31 would develop cataracts and 12 would develop sexual problems. While more than one half of these 1,000 women will naturally experience hormonal symptoms, tamoxifen will give these symptoms to an extra 120 women. When there was a study done on this drug, only six percent of the people said they would consider it after talking to their doctors; one percent actually got a prescription filled for tamoxifen, and 80 percent were too worried about the side effects to think about filling a prescription. When a study was done on raloxifene, which significantly reduces the risk of breast cancer but has less severe side effects, the results were similar to those of tamoxifen. Doctors have called this resistance to take the drug omission bias, which is when “[p]eople tend to worry more about a low risk of harm from something they do (like taking a pill or a vaccine) than about a higher risk of harm from doing nothing.” Dr. Norton of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York is confident that new research being done on aromatase inhibitors, which lower the amount of estrogen in the body, would lead to new cancer prevention drugs with less worrisome side effects.

Tara Parker-Pope has been a professional reporter for twenty years. She writes a weekly consumer health column and daily health blog for The New York Times. Before those jobs, she was the health columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She won the Media Award from the North American Menopause Society along with the Second Century Award for Excellence in Health Care from the Columbia University School of Nursing for her article about the findings of the Women’s Health Initiative in The Wall Street Journal. In this article, Tara seems to be taking the side of the medication. She implies that the medication is there to help women more than it is going to harm them. She says, “parents gave far more credence to hypothetical concerns about side effects than about the very real danger of an unvaccinated child’s becoming severely ill with the disease.” The fact that she calls the concerns of the side effects “hypothetical” shows she understands that there is a good chance that the side effects will not happen, and if they do they will not be as serious as the disease. She calls contracting the disease a “very real danger,” which shows that she would rather deal with hypotheticals and maybes than definite dangers. In this article, Tara quotes Ms. Birkhold, an ideal candidate for the medication, who had no interest in taking the drugs. She balances these quotes with Dr. Larry Norton, the deputy physician in chief for breast cancer programs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who understands why people may not want to take the drugs, however, he is in full support of and encourages people to try tamoxifen. Overall, I found the author to stay neutral and give key facts about both sides of the issue. The article was very interesting and informative.

This article made me think about the assignment we had at the beginning of the year about whether or not cancer was infectious. That assignment got me thinking about how cancer is not usually infectious, but it is unbelievably serious. I found it shocking that only six percent of the people in the study considered taking the drug to help eliminate the possibility of getting cancer. What was more surprising to me was that only one percent actually got the prescription filled. I completely see why these women would hesitate and not want to take the drug, but I feel like the dangers of cancer are much greater and far more serious than the possible side effects of taking tamoxifen and raloxifene. I have family members who suffered through the treatments of many different types of cancer, and if they were given the option, they would have taken the risk of having to deal with side effects of these medications over having to go through what they went through with cancer.

H1N1 scare distracts from West Nile Virus Threat

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-west-nile-virusjan03,0,7322936.story
By Angie Leventis Lourgos

I found this article to be very interesting when i first read it. This article written by Angie Leventis Lourgos talks about in 2009 while numerous cases of the H1N1 flu came out, a suprisingly low number of another recently new disease was being recorded; the disease known as the West Nile Virus. Usually this disease is seen in higher numbers, but many health experts believe it was due to wet springs and summers; they do not believe that it is actually going away.

Marilyn Ruiz, a clinical assistant professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that it has not gone away because they are still finding this disease in mosqittos. She also noted that it is easy to forget about, when all this commotion is circled around the H1N1 Virus.

It is said that the best time for this virus to spread is during hot summers when it is a perfect breeding ground for mosqittos. Season like those have reported many more cases of this virus.

It was also reported in 2009 there were only five cases of West Nile in Illinois, but back in 2002 there was a shocking 884 human cases with 67 deaths. This was a huge difference to see. This virus was actually first confirmed in birds here in 2001. Health officials believe that there were more cases of it than reported. Most people who contract this virus do not even know how they got it. People who have it usually show no syptoms, only such like a headache or fever. In rare cases of this virus the disease can be fatal or can case severe damage.

Many health experts say that this disease is hard to track because you need to anylize all three cycles of populations of birds, mosquittos, and humans. the disease is between mosqittos and birds and then mosquittos give it to humans.
Emily Zielinski-Gutierrez of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, "There's a lot we don't know about the interrelationships."
This makes it all the more hard to truly understand this virus.

I believe that this article was very good because instead of just talking about the H1N1 virus, which is all we hear about now, it brought up another virus that is also just as dangerous. It brings up the awareness of the West Nile and how easy it is for a human to contract it. It is only transmitted by mosquittos, and during the summer they are every where. Unlike Swine Flu, the West Nile barely shows any symptoms, a fever and a headache, but those are things that are easily cureable today. So it just shows that we have to be more aware of our surroundings and know ways to protect ourselves from further disease.

Search for a Cure-AIDS

The article I read is "Search for a Cure-AIDS Turns 20" and I found it on nationalgeographic.com.The article is about the world wide search for a preventative vaccine for HIV, the virus that causes the disease AIDS.

It starts out talking about a 37 year old heroin addict who was getting his blood drain at Clinic 17 of the Bangkok Vaccine Evaluation Group. He has high hopes that his contribution to the search for a vaccine for HIV will be beneficial to society in the years to come. He is one out of 2,500 injecting drug users in Thailand that have enrolled in a trial of the first potential HIV vaccine to reach the third and final stage of clinical testing. Not only are people in Thailand searching for a vaccine but people all over North America and Europe have also been involved in the search. Almost 8,000 people at high risk for HIV but HIV negative, have volunteered to receive either injections of the vaccine called AIDSVAX or a placebo, without knowing which would be given. Over a course of three years, these participants blood is drawn at 6 month intervals. If the vaccine group shows a lower infection rate than the placebo group, there is evidence that the vaccine is working. The results will take many years to come out however, we will have results from the first trials, begun in 1998-99 in Europe and North America by the end of this year.

More than 36 million people world wide are carriers of HIV even though 95% of them are never actually diagnosed. Statistics say that every 24 hours 15,00 more people become infected with the virus while 8,00 others die from the disease caused by HIV, AIDS. AIDS is a horrible disease that takes victims mercilessly when it disables their immune system and causes them to die from otherwise treatable ailments. If a vaccine were to be developed to help prevent this disease, thousands of lives would be spared.

I think it is very interesting how scientists go about creating vaccines to help prevent the various epidemic diseases taking victims all across the globe.This hopeful vaccine for HIV would benefit society an unbelievable amount because so many people who would otherwise die from HIV/AIDS, would be saved. However if this vaccine is developed, it should not be used as an excuse to continue having unprotected sex because safe sex should always be practiced.

Does Air Travel Increase Your Risk for Getting Sick?

http://wellness.blogs.time.com/2009/08/13/does-air-travel-increase-your-risk-for-getting-sick/

I read the Time Magazine article Does Air Travel Increase Your Risk for Getting Sick? I was very interested the read this article because with the reintroduction of the Swine Flu, many people were fearful of flying. According to this article, air travel is nothing to be feared.

According to Sr. Russell B. Rayman, executive director of the Aerospace Medical Association, peoples fears are "overblown." Even though airplanes are not clinically sterile, they have rigid air quality requirements. Many people believe that everyone on a plane is breathing in the same air, this is untrue. Instead of breathing the same air with 400 passengers, you are only sharing air with the people in your row. This is because of "side to side air circulation systems" in planes and the fact that fresh air comes out by your feet as well as by your head. Dr. Rayman says "If anything pathological were in the air, it would be confined to that row, or at most, it could possibly spread one or two rows in either direction,"

Rayman says that it is unlikely for microbes to make their way along seven or eight seats and the high efficiency air filters also provide protection for travelers. Like any public place, there is a risk for disease exposure on planes when other passengers are ill. Rayman also says that because you are on the plane for a long period of time the chances of catching a disease are greater than getting on and off a bus or waiting in line at the store. If you're in an airplane flying across the Atlantic, you may be sitting next to somebody for a long period of time which is not generally true in a grocery store." Regardless of where you are getting sick, particularly with Swine Flu, it comes down to the proximity of people.

I addition to the airflow, planes have requirements for the introduction of fresh air into the cabin. 55 lbs. of fresh air per occupant per minutes according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Rayman says that there has been too much misinformation about travel safety being linked with Swine Flu, but emphasizes that people who are already sick should avoid traveling to help protect themselves as well as the people around them. "If you're considerate of other people and you have a fever or you have the flu, you shouldn't be flying," he says. "It's just common sense."