An analysis of Puerto Rican Zika patients who had thrombocytopenia, a rare complication, found that, in those with the severest cases, immune treatments may be more effective than platelet transfusion. A team from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Puerto Rico reported its findings today in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.
Today the ministry of health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported two more Ebola cases in the ongoing outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. The outbreak total now stands at 421 cases (374 confirmed and 47 probable), including 241 deaths.
The two new cases are from Kyondo and Kalunguta, and one additional death was recorded in Beni. Seventy-four cases are still under investigation.
In its daily update on its Ebola outbreak, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) health ministry today reported no new confirmed cases, though it did report one more death in a patient from Beni, the outbreak's main hot spot.
In the latest global polio developments, Pakistan reported two new wild poliovirus type 1 cases and three African countries reported seven more vaccine-derived polio cases in their outbreaks, according to today's weekly update from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).
Saudi Arabia reported two more MERS-CoV cases, according to an update to its week 44 epidemiologic report today.
Neither of the patients had contact with camels, a factor known to raise the risk of contracting MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus). One patient is a 62-year-old man from the city of Omluj in Tabuk region in the northwest, and the other is a 53-year-old man from Riyadh in the central part of the country.
In its weekly update yesterday the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said 36 more suspected acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) cases are under investigation, raising the national total since the first of the year to 191.
The data suggest that, for the vast majority of men, Zika RNA is cleared from semen within 4 months.
US Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials have confirmed a second outbreak of low-pathogenic H7N3 avian flu in a California turkey flock in the same county—Stanislaus—as one reported a week ago, according to a World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) report yesterday.
Kuwait's health ministry said yesterday that an investigation so far hasn't turned up any evidence to suggest that a South Korean business traveler who was diagnosed with MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) after returning to his home country was exposed in Kuwait, the Korea Times reported today.
Clinical follow-up of 141 babies born with congenital Zika virus problems who were evaluated at a referral center in Brazil revealed that 67% experienced epilepsy, a prevalence that was higher than the 9% to 50% reported in earlier studies. Researchers from Brazil described their findings today in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.
