Maryn McKenna's Blog, page 12

The “Road Not (Yet) Taken” On H7N9 Flu — And How Far We’ve Gotten

Last week’s New England Journal of Medicine included a thoughtful meditation on the possibility that the new bird flu out of China, H7N9, could become a globe-spanning pandemic — and on how much knowledge is needed before we’ll be able ...

Summer Is Lyme Disease Season. The Price of the Drug to Treat It Just Exploded

There's a shortage of doxycycline -- the antibiotic used to treat STDs, uncomplicated infections, acnes, and Lyme disease. In some places, the cost of doxycycline has soared from $20 to $3,000 -- just in time for summer, which is Lyme ...

Summer is Lyme Disease Season. The Price Of The Drug To Treat It Just Exploded.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you might remember some posts about nationwide shortages of drugs. The Food and Drug Administration was concerned, and so were very senior physicians working in infectious disease, cancer, everyday emergency medicine and even ...

How Do You Know Which Chicken to Buy? This Kickstarter Might Help.

You know those wallet cards and apps that help you make good choices about buying seafood: what's endangered, what's overfished, what's responsible to eat? This Kickstarter effort, BuyingPoultry.com, hopes to do the same for chicken.

To Prevent MRSA In Hospitals, Don’t Prevent Only MRSA

Practically since the multi-drug resistant bacterium MRSA became a public health issue in the 1960s, health care has been arguing over how best to prevent its spread — particularly in hospitals, where the bug first became a problem and where ...

World Health Organization Annual Meeting: New Flu, Coronavirus Urgent Priorities

In Geneva today, the World Health Assembly — that is, the annual meeting of the 194 governments whose collective commitment support the World Health Organization — opened as traditional, with a speech by the WHO’s director-general, Dr. Margaret Chan. It ...

Fecal Transplants: The FDA Steps In

Hi constant readers: I am traveling again, and while I’m in a far time zone, news has broken that you might be interested in. So while I don’t have a full understanding myself yet of what’s going on, I’m going ...

More On The New Coronavirus: Cases in France, The WHO In Saudi Arabia

My last two posts looked at the problems that might be caused by hospital spread of the new coronavirus, based on what happened during the early days of SARS 10 years ago. Hospital spread of this new virus is a ...

How The New Coronavirus Might Be Like SARS: Hospital Spread (Part 2)

The most recent official update on the novel coronavirus raises the possibility that most of the recent cluster — 13 cases out of 30 — may be due to the novel disease spreading within one hospital. (Yesterday there were reports ...

How The New Coronavirus Might Be Like SARS: Hospital Spread

The most recent update on the novel coronavirus that has been spreading in the Mideast since last summer adds three more cases to the outbreak, and raises the possibility that most of the recent cluster — 13 cases out of ...