The World is Short One Astute Clinician

It's almost a cliche in my field to speak of the "astute clinician" -- the physician of unborrowed vision who sees something amiss to which others are blind. They find the needles in the haystacks, the outliers, the one aberrancy among homogeneity. Behind every outbreak, you will always find one of this rare breed of physician.

Every infectious disease story has a hero like this and there is news today that one of the best recent examples of this pantheon of infectious disease doctors has died: Dr. Deborah Asnis. 

While Dr. Asnis might not be known to the general American public, the work she did surely is. Dr. Asinis was the first physician in the US to alert public health authorities that something unusual was happening in Queens in 1999. in particular, Dr. Asnis noted an unusual cluster of encephalitis cases some of which had polio-like features. Fast-forward through a major investigation led by Dr. Marcie Layton (another astute clinician) and extraordinary veterinarians and at the end it was announced that West Nile Virus had made its first foray to this side of the planet.  

Were it not for her brilliant identifications it is unclear how long it would have taken for public health authorities to realize what was occurring, delaying mosquito control efforts and physician awareness.

I never formally met Dr. Asnis but I recall atleast one occasion passing her at a meeting and glancing at her name badge. As someone who devours stories of outbreaks and knew of her work, I was star struck. The infectious disease world is a little less astute without her.

Having Too Many Vaccines: We Should be So Lucky

At last night’s Republican’s presidential candidate debate the vaccine issue arose. I believe that infectious diseases are worth talking about in these types of forums because the government has an important role in keeping its citizens safe from infectious disease. However, when vaccines are discussed by presidential candidates the exchange often proceeds as if there actually is a question about their benefit.

Often, the media continually dangles these red meat questions in front of candidates who apparently care less for the truth than they do pandering to people whose votes I would never want. Last night Donald Trump delivered answers that were concerning (I thought it was cool that the Washington Post dug out an old quote from me on the topic for their coverage).

While Dr. Carson explicitly—and thankfully—rejected the false notion of any link between autism spectrum disorder and vaccines, he did give credence to the idea that there are too many vaccines administered in too short a time with which Mr. Trump agreed.

Make no mistake, Dr. Carson is a world-class pediatric neurosurgeon who has advanced his field immeasurably and, as a physician, I deeply respect his unequivocal achievements. However, on the issue of too many vaccines over too short a period, the evidence clearly does not support Dr. Carson's position--though his statement regarding the relative importance of certain vaccines based on the severity of the disease they intend to prevent is valid (and why vaccines such as the influenza vaccine are not mandated by government schools).

While it is true that the vaccination schedule has become increasingly more extensive and that is something I am thankful for. We now have vaccines against human papillomavirus, pneumococcus, hemophilus, rotavirus, varicella, and meningooccus—diseases that children, and adults, no longer have to fear. I actually wish there were more vaccines to administer to children and to adults.

It must be remembered, however, that though there are more vaccines routinely administered they are of such purity that the load on the immune system of all of them combined is less than what was in the once routinely administered smallpox vaccines. Moreover, a child’s immune system is literally bombarded with foreign invaders, foreign materials, and myriad challenges that our current high purity vaccines pale by comparison.

The immunization schedule is not divined from tea leaves, it is made after rigorous deliberation by medical professionals who weigh mountains of data on immunogenicity, safety, and epidemiology. Vaccines have transformed our children into bionic $20 billion men and women and, until more diseases meet the fate of smallpox, the more vaccines the better.

Mold Outbreaks in Hospitals: Rare and Containable

Hospital based outbreaks of infectious disease are nothing new and have haunted hospitals for hundreds of years. Indeed horrific outbreaks of childbed fever in Austria were what prompted the revolutionary studies of Semmelweis on the power of simple hand-washing.

While hospitals have modernized and are often associated with that particular sterile smell--when I was child I loved to sniff my mom's lab coat--they are chock full of microbes waiting to pounce. MRSA, norovirus, C.diff, VRE, Legionella, Acinetobacter, ESBLs, and CRE abound in hospitals and cause over 800,000 healthcare-associated infections annually with 75,000 of those ending in death. 

As I often say, we live in a world of microbes and they are literally everywhere -- including hospitals, no matter how clean and no matter how modern. News of mold being present in a hospital in Pittsburgh (on which I am on staff) may seem alarming, but it is not unprecedented as hospitals are part of our microbe-laden planet.

Molds are types of fungi (see graphic) that grow in a certain manner, forming hyphae or little branches. Yeast, the other type of fungi, grow in a different manner forming buds. Some fungi are dimorphic and can switch between the two forms. The most famous mold is probably Penicillium from which penicillin was derived, changing the trajectory of medicine forever. Molds can be found in your fridge, in your basement (the medically unimportant "black molds"), and basically everywhere you look -- if you see them on your favorite cheese you can often just separate that portion of the cheese and the rest will be perfectly edible. 

Other medically important molds include Aspergillus, Scedosporium, Fusarium, and Exserohilum. This last was recently in headlines after a nationwide outbreak of fungal meningitis occurred after steroid vials were contaminated during manufacture. 

Mold infections can range from infection to the lung to disseminated infection throughout the body--an often fatal event. Symptoms such as difficulty breathing and skin lesions can be present either as result of dissemination from the blood or from direct infection of a skin breach (e.g. after the Joplin tornadoes individual impaled with debris developed Mucor infections). Each mold has its own specific predilections and associated clinical course, some more severe than others, and some more amenable than others to anti-fungal treatments.

Healthcare-based outbreaks of molds are a rarity but have occurred. Some recent cases include:

• An ongoing CDC-led investigation of a multi-state outbreak of Bipolaris infections in cardiac surgery patients many of whom had open chest wounds for an extended peroid
• A 6 person Aspergillus outbreak associated with a contaminated air-handling system
• A single fatal case of Rhizopus tied to a contaminated probiotic supplement at a Connecticut pediatric hospital
• A hospital-based outbreak of 5 fatal cases of Rhizopus tied to contaminated bed linens at a Louisiana pediatric hospital
• Ophthalmologic mold infections tied to contaminated injections

Mold infections are not the usual nosocomial infection and often can only infect those with a high degree of immune system compromise. Because of that fact these infections are thankfully fairly delimited but, because of the overall condition of those susceptible to such infections, can prove to be very severe, as seen in the outbreaks mentioned above. The general public or hospital staff has nothing to fear from these occurrences.

The large scale of the steroid injection fungal meningitis outbreak is the exception that proves the rule as its mechanism of entry into the body involved a major assist in breaching the major component of the immune system: the skin. 

Hospitals are constantly vigilant for patient safety from molds and other microbes, and though there is variation in the ability of individual hospitals to deal with such situations, I am completely confident that this latest situation is being handled expertly.

We are the Germiest Place in the World

One of my least favorite types of popular infectious disease news story has to deal with variations on the question of "what is the germiest (fill in the blank)?" The latest version of this question has people swabbing airplane surfaces and, not too surprisingly, the tray table was found to harbor the most bacteria.

What studies like these overlook are a lot of important points such as:

• We live in a bacteria-laden world and we ourselves are teeming with bacteria
• There is a distinction to be drawn between potentially harmful bacteria and the much more numerous harmless bacteria in the environment (in fact the actual study points out that no fecal coliforms were noted)
• How "germy" a place really doesn't have much of an impact unless you're dragging a open wound (or the equivalent) through it -- this has a minimal to zero health impact

That tray tables--the place where people rest their hands, their utensils, their napkins, and deposit their sneezes and coughs--have a lot of bacteria is, somewhat paradoxically, the result of the fact that that are of the plane is the one with the most contact with...us.

Plague and Cholera: A Portrait of A Genius

When people speak of the influence of Louis Pasteur they often delimit it to the actual breakthroughs which he directly presided over. Though enormous in its scope, limiting Pasteur's achievements to just these does not do him justice. Not only did Pasteur discover a great many things (germ theory of disease, rabies vaccination, anthrax vaccination, pasteurization, the falsehood of spontaneous generation) his discoveries provided a green light for others to follow in his path--indeed he overtly cultivated a band of Pasteurians who pushed the field further and to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude.

Of the Pasteurians, one in particular deserves special mention and consideration: Alexandre Yersin, the subject of a recent fictionalized biography entitled Plague and Cholera written by Patrick Deville. 

Fictionalized biographies are tricky as the author must balance presenting a plot while staying somewhat bounded by actual events in the subject's life and I believe Deville accomplishes this expertly.

Yersin is chiefly remembered today for his discovery of the plague bacillus, which today bears his name. This story of Yersin's discovery, in spite of the odds tilted in favor of Kitasato a rival from the Koch Institute, was one I was familiar with but I had little knowledge of Yersin's life outside this episode and upon learning of it my admiration for his genius has grown.

Yersin was a true polymath who excelled and made advancements not just in microbiology but in botany, agriculture, geography, and many other fields. He basically had to be dragged from his hobbies in order to solve infectious disease problems, which he did in a manner that makes it look easy before returning to his hobbies. He is portrayed as a solitary, independent-minded man--a theme of many of the lives of innovators and geniuses--whose fascination with the world was never-ending. 

My favorite quote from the book is a great description of the Pasteurians and those who study and treat infectious diseases to this day:

"They are daredevils, too, adventurers, because in that day and age there is as much danger in getting close to infectious diseases as in taking off in an aircraft made of wood. A crowd of loners."

Never awarded a Nobel Prize, Yersin's life serves as an exemplar of a genius at work at the relentless pursuit of understanding. I highly recommend Plague and Cholera.