Thread: Parasitic infection plagues states along Mexico border

It is spreading....

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 8, 2007


Federal researchers say neurocysticercosis, a brain infection caused by a pork tapeworm, is a "growing public health problem in the United States," especially in states bordering Mexico, where the disease is endemic.
Neurocysticercosis is the "most common parasitic disease of the central nervous system," according to a study jointly conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and California public health officials, who reported that "international travel and immigration are bringing the disorder to areas where it is not endemic," such as this country.
"Neurocysticercosis is the primary cause of epilepsy in endemic areas. This brain worm is very serious," Victor C. Tsang, chief of the immunochemistry laboratory in the Parasitic Disease Division of the CDC said in a telephone interview.
"Oral-fecal contamination is the standard route of transmission," he said of the condition.
Neurocysticercosis refers specifically to nervous-system disorders caused by cysticercosis, an infection which can also harm eyes and muscles.
"Recent data indicate cysticercosis is an important cause of death in California," Mr. Tsang and other authors wrote in a recent report on the disease published in the European medical journal Acta Neurologica Scandinavica.
A separate report in this month's issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases found that nearly 60 percent of the 221 U.S. deaths from cysticercosis between 1990 and 2002 involved California residents.
"Most patients [187, or 85 percent] were foreign-born, and 137 [62 percent] had emigrated from Mexico. The 33 U.S.-born persons who died of cysticercosis represented 15 percent of all cysticercosis-related deaths" during the study period, said University of California researchers who wrote the latest report.
Although neurocysticercosis is "especially" a problem in the Southwest, it has also surfaced in other places, such as New York, Philadelphia and Charlotte, N.C., data from other studies show.
"In Hispanics and Latinos, neurocysticercosis accounts for 13.5 percent of [U.S.] emergency-room visits for seizures," federal and California investigators wrote in their report in Acta Neurologica Scandinavica published late last year. "The growth is mainly due to immigration from endemic developing countries," they reported.
Neurocysticercosis occurs when the larvae of a pork tapeworm known as Taenia solium enter and infect the brain and spinal cord and form cysts. Another parasitic disease related to consumption of undercooked pork -- trichinosis -- was relatively common in the U.S. before meat freezing became routine. But that disease is caused by a different type of worm, the roundworm Trichinella spiralis.
A person infected with the intestinal tapeworm stage of the infection will shed tapeworm eggs in bowel movements. Tapeworm eggs that are accidentally swallowed by other people can cause infection, the CDC says in information about the disease at its Web site, www.cdc.gov. These eggs are spread through food, water or surfaces contaminated with feces.
"So if you have people cooking for you or handling your food who are tapeworm carriers and don't have good personal hygiene, you will be exposed to the eggs of the tapeworm" and become infected by swallowing food they touch, Mr. Tsang explained.
Carriers tend to be people from rural developing countries with poor hygiene, where pigs are allowed to roam freely and eat human feces. Mr. Tsang said the condition is rife in Mexico and other parts of Latin America and Central America and "in a large part of China and Africa."
Infection with neurocysticercosis most often causes headaches and seizures, but it can also result in mental confusion, balance difficulties and brain swelling that can kill.
Norma Arceo, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Health Services, said 65 cases of neurocysticercosis were reported in that state in 2004, compared with 44 cases in 2005 and 45 cases in the first 10 months of 2006.
c Researcher Amy Baskerville contributed to this report.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/200 ... -1360r.htm

I don't think Mr. Green realizes how serious this is, or he would not be smiling while feeling green at the gills.

This is really awful, and to think they hire these people to cook food at times? Well, I think I'll be cooking even more now, plus re-examining my every headache.

any individual involved in food preparation should have a medical certification. We are having problems with more and more of our food supply and now Bush is allowing disease individuals in the country without concern about the American people. Oh yes and we have to pay for the medical bills for these people.

When I was in the military, if you had a serious condition that you entered with, you were discharged and the military took no responsibility for your care. While not everything about the military should be used as an example in this case, we should use it. As soon as an illegal who is sick comes to the ER we deport them. Many of the anchor babies were conceived in Mexico and their mothers just came to America for the benefits. Buses cross the border with women who are due to have children within hours and we must pay for them. We are being drained financially, resource wise, and emotionally due to criminal aliens and our politicans.

Beckyal, my brother was in the Navy, stationed for a while in San Diego, and he said everyone down there knew these women would come over to "visit" and then he said you'd see their husbands/boyfriends walking them all day to make them go into labor.

I think they need to have a rule, see a pregnant Mexican national standing in line at the border to "visit", and deny her entry.

http://washingtontimes.com/national/200 ... -5018r.htm

Parasitic disease found in blood near border
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 23, 2007


A large study of blood donations collected from two U.S. border states found that nearly one in 5,000 was positive for Chagas' disease, a potentially fatal parasitic disorder endemic in Latin America, according to a federal report.
In a separate study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disclosed that adults in three states -- Missouri, California and Washington -- contracted measles last summer after traveling to China to adopt children.
Both studies, published in the current issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, show how infectious diseases are entering the United States through immigration and foreign travel.
Chagas' disease affects an estimated 11 million people throughout Latin America, and nearly a third suffer chronic cardiac or gastrointestinal illnesses. Cardiac conditions include a diseased heart, irregular heartbeat and sudden death.
Dr. Louis V. Kirchhoff, a Chagas' disease specialist at the University of Iowa's medical school, has estimated that as many as 10 percent of the Mexicans who migrate to the United States are infected.
The disease is caused by the blood-borne parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. In endemic areas, it is transmitted primarily by triatomine insects commonly known as "kissing bugs."
Infection also may occur via blood transfusion, congenital transmission, organ transplantation, laboratory incident and ingestion of triatomine-tainted food or drink.
The American Red Cross compiled data from the blood-donation screening for Chagas' disease after analysis of 148,969 blood samples collected from August to last month from blood centers in Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif., and in Tucson, Ariz.
A study conducted in 2005 involved about 40,000 blood donors. That clinical trial found no blood samples positive for Chagas' disease.
The Red Cross and Blood Systems Inc., collection agencies that are responsible for nearly two-thirds of the nation's blood supply, began screening for Chagas' disease on Jan. 29.
In a statement about the measles study in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC said, "It is increasingly rare to see certain vaccine-preventable diseases in this country, especially among adults."
The authors of the study about three American women in their late 30s who contracted measles in July and August after visiting China to adopt babies wrote: "Diseases that are no longer endemic in the United States continue to occur among travelers, often resulting in delayed recognition and delayed notification of public health authorities."
The Missouri, California and Washington women were among a group of 11 U.S. families that flew to China last summer to adopt children from three orphanages in Guangdong province.
All developed skin rashes when they returned to the U.S. Diagnosis was delayed while health care providers considered other causes such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever and an allergic reaction to penicillin. The women said they had been vaccinated against measles as children, but the vaccinations could not be documented.
The women all "recovered fully" and did not infect anyone else, the authors said.