- MIAMI (Reuters) -- Two people
who contracted West Nile virus in Georgia may have gotten the deadly infection
while undergoing dialysis treatment, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.
-
- The infections, which occurred last year, were suspicious
because the two men were treated on the same dialysis machine on the same
day, according to a report published by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.
-
- A third person who received dialysis on the same day
showed exposure to the virus at some point in the past. One of the patients,
a 60-year-old man with a history of diabetes, hypertension and prostate
cancer, subsequently died.
-
- "One or more of these dialysis patients might have
acquired West Nile virus infection at the dialysis center through an
-
- undetected breach in infection control procedures or
outside the dialysis center from the bite of an infected mosquito,"
the report said.
-
- Although outbreaks of infectious diseases surface from
time to time in dialysis clinics, investigators in Georgia could find no
evidence this happened in the medical center that treated the patients
in southern Georgia. But they could not it rule out, so state investigators
consulted with the CDC on the matter and together they produced a report.
-
- Blood samples from three others treated on the same machine
around the same time were negative for West Nile.
-
- The infected patients could have contracted the virus
as a result of mosquito bites, the most common way the disease is spread,
because each lived in a neighborhood where the insects were present, according
to Georgia and CDC investigators.
-
- No infections have surfaced in other dialysis patients,
according to the report.
-
- "There is a risk there for infection based on geography,
and we haven't seen cases spread by dialysis before or since this investigation,"
said Richard Quartarone, a spokesman for Georgia's division of public health.
-
- But the report cautioned hospitals and medical centers
offering dialysis to make sure that their machines, needles and other devices
were adequately cleaned before and after each patient was treated.
-
- Dialysis patients are more susceptible to some types
of infections because their immune systems are often weaker and the transfusions
and other medical procedures they undergo expose their bodies to germs.
-
- Until two years ago, when a handful of cases surfaced
among blood recipients, it was believed that humans could only get West
Nile from mosquitoes or possibly from handling an infected bird or animal.
It is now known that the virus can be spread through blood transfusions
and organ transplants.
-
- Most people who are infected suffer nothing more than
headaches and flu-like symptoms, but the elderly, chronically ill and those
with weak immune systems can develop fatal encephalitis and meningitis.
-
- Twenty people have died and 669 others have been infected
with West Nile in 27 states this year, according to the latest figures
from the CDC, which has tracked the disease since it first surfaced in
the nation in 1999.
-
- This year's epidemic is centered in Arizona, California
and Colorado. Georgia has reported no human cases in 2004.
-
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