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Salmonella Concerns Shift to Peppers
The salmonella cases have now swelled to over 1,000 cases. The outbreak was originally blamed on tomatoes but it is now being blamed on jalapeno peppers reports the Wall Street Journal. New cases are still being reported with the most recent case falling on June 26th.

More than 1,000 people have become sick in the salmonella outbreak at first only blamed on tomatoes, and federal health officials now say jalape?o peppers caused some illnesses, especially in three larger clusters.

The outbreak, which has become the largest one carried by food in the last 10 years, also caused the death of a Texas man in his 80s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. The CDC said salmonella may have contributed to the death of another Texas man, who had cancer.

As of Tuesday, 1,017 people — from 41 states, the District of Columbia and Canada — had been confirmed to be infected with the rare salmonella strain dubbed Saintpaul, the CDC said. The first patient became sick on April 10 and the latest on June 26.

The latest figure is an increase from the 943 cases that were reported as of July 3. The outbreak appears to be continuing.

The CDC updated its saintpaul salmonella outbreak page today. The page says jalapeno’s explain some of the cases but not all. Raw tomatoes, fresh serrano peppers, and fresh cilantro are also suspects.

Recently, many clusters of illnesses have been identified in several states among persons who ate at restaurants. Most clusters involve fewer than 5 ill persons. Three larger clusters have been intensively investigated. In one, illnesses were linked to consumption of an item containing fresh tomatoes and fresh jalapeno peppers. In the other two, illnesses were linked to an item containing fresh jalapeno peppers and no other of the suspect items. The accumulated data from all investigations indicate that jalapeno peppers caused some illnesses but that they do not explain all illnesses. Raw tomatoes, fresh serrano peppers, and fresh cilantro also remain under investigation. Investigators from many agencies are collaborating to track the source of the implicated peppers and other produce items.

WebMD notes that so far restaurants haven’t been asked not to use jalapeno or serrano peppers. More stories on the ongoing salmonella outbreak can be found at Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chicago Tribue and MSNBC.

Photo souce: fboyd

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Sublingual Immunotherapy Treatment Shows Potential For Bee Stings
WebMD reports that a new research study has found that placing drops of honeybee venom under the tongue can significantly reduce reactions in people allergic to bee stings. This procedure is known as sublingual immunotherapy. Partipants in the study were gradually given larger doses of bee venom over a six week period.

The participants were randomly assigned to receive either sublingual immunotherapy in the form of honeybee venom drops placed under the tongue, or placebo drops.

Patients in the immunotherapy group got escalating doses of honeybee venom for six weeks, followed by a maintenance dose, given three times a week for six months.

“You hold the drop under the tongue for about one or two minutes, then swallow,” Passalacqua says.

After being gradually subjected to greater quantities of the bee venom for six weeks it was time for the participants to be stung by a real honeybee. The reactions to the stings were much smaller than they would have been without the sublingual immunotherapy.

Then came the bee sting challenge. “We put insects in a jar and then put the jar on the patient’s forearm” and looked to see what happened, he says.

It worked. The median diameter of the sting wheals in patients given sublingual immunotherapy dropped from about 8 to 3 inches. Looked at another way, wheal diameter was reduced by more than 50% in more than half of them.

“This was a very apparent and very significant reduction in the size of the reaction to the sting,” Passalacqua says.

In contrast, there was no change in wheal diameter in the placebo group, and one person broke out in hives.

The tongue drop treatments next will go through a round of testing on people who have very severe entire body reactions to bee stings. But there is no reason to wait for treatment if you have a bee allergy because shots are already available. Allergist Clifford Bassett, MD told WMD that venom shots are 95% effective “in reducing the risk of systemic reactions in people with honeybee sting allergies.” Shots can be inconvenient but it is much better to play it safe - get your shot and reduce the risk of having a severe reaction to a bee sting.

Photo credit: delgaudm

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West Nile Virus Can Cause Lifelong Symptoms
WebMD (on CBS) is reporting that a new study on West Nile Virus has found that one out of every 150 people infected suffer from severe nuerological disease. Of those about 40% have serious symptoms such as difficulty walking, memory loss and depression that they may deal with for the rest of their lives.

One in 150 people infected with West Nile virus get severe neurological disease. More than 40% of these patients may have serious symptoms for the rest of their lives, say Kristy Murray, PhD, DVM, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and colleagues.

The finding comes from five years of data on 108 Houston-area residents who came down with severe West Nile disease after infection with the mosquito-borne virus. Murray’s team evaluated the patients every six months.

A year after their West Nile virus infection, 60% of these patients still had serious symptoms. Five years later, 42% had not fully recovered - and weren’t getting any better.

These lasting symptoms included fatigue, muscle weakness, depression, difficulty walking, memory loss, and personality change.

These findings show that WNV is a very serious disease. People should continue to take precautions and avoid mosquito bites as much as possible during the mosquito season. WNV is still infecting thousands of people in the United States each year. 3,598 people were infected with West Nile Virus in 2007 and 121 were killed.

Graphic above is from the CDC’s 2007 WNV incidence map.

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‘Male Sexual Enhancement’ Fraudster Gets Jail Time

The founder of a company that sells Enzyte — “the once-daily tablet for natural male enhancement” — was sentenced to 25 years in jail yesterday. Berkeley Premium Neutraceuticals and other defendants were ordered to forfeit $500 million. The drug was promoted by a guy called “Smiling Bob” (pictured at left, smiling).

Here’s the AP story; the WSJ Law Blog’s take is here.

Dietary supplements are subject to much less regulatory scrutiny than prescription drugs. But there are limits to the claims supplement manufacturers can make (see, for example, the recent Airborne settlement).

And this case seems to go beyond mere claims.

Steve Warshak, founder of Berkeley Premium Neutraceuticals, was convicted earlier this year on 93 counts of conspiracy, fraud and money laundering. Federal prosecutors said the company bilked customers out of $100 million through deceptive ads, manipulated credit-card transactions and refusal to accept returns or cancel orders.

“This is a case about greed,” U.S. District Judge Arthur Spiegel said. “Steven Warshak preyed on perceived sexual inadequacies of customers.”

Warshak said: “I do feel deep remorse and would like to apologize to any customer who ever had a bad experience with my company.”

3-D Brain Surgery
3-D is no longer just a special effect tool for the movies. Brain surgeons are starting to use 3-D technology for brain surgery. The technology should help surgeons operate more easily on brain tumors. The video from CBS talks about a patient who had a brain tumor that was partially blocking his vision.

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Need a Body Part? Grow Your Own
Someday - maybe not too far in the future - a machine may grow the new body part you need. That would be a miracle as some “98,000 people are on a waiting list for transplants right now” according to CBS News. CBS says a research team at Wake Forest University believes any body part replacement you need can be grown.

From blood vessels to muscle tissue, Atala and his team at Wake Forest University believe that in theory anything inside the body can be grown outside the body, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports. And it’s real: They’ve made 18 different types of tissue so far.

“That’s a heart valve?” Andrews asked.

Atala said: “This is an engineered heart valve.”

What he pointed to was a pulsing heart valve to be transplanted into a sheep.

“When people ask me ‘what do you do,’ we grow tissues and organs,” he said. “We are making body parts that we can implant right back into patients.”

Once considered a Frankenstein fantasy, the field of regenerative medicine is on the verge of unimagined breakthroughs. Scientists believe every part of the body has cells capable of regeneration - all researchers need to do is isolate those cells and coax them to grow.

Growing your own might body part or organ might also help the body overcome the reject factor that happens so often with transplants. With this kind of technology if you had a body part that was failing your doctor could order you a replacement which would be grown using your own cells. Here’s a video from CBS News about the amazing future of body part replacement. The video shows the oven-like incubators that grow the body tissue, blood vessels and organs.

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