Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/117686
4A Daily News ��� Tuesday, March 26, 2013 Vitality health & fitness Small in number but a deadly threat From teens' sleeping CHICAGO (MCT) ��� A family of drug-resistant bacteria that experts say kills up to 50 percent of people infected is spreading, prompting doctors and public health officials to step up efforts to protect patients. Infections caused by these germs ��� called carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae, or CRE ��� are still rare, but they are difficult and sometimes impossible to treat. Carbapenems are antibiotics used as a lastresort treatment for seriously ill people. No one knows the exact number of CRE infections or deaths nationwide, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working on a report that would compile those statistics for the first time. But the CDC says an increasing percentage of germs in the enterobacteriaceae family are becoming resistant to carbapenems. A decade ago, 1 percent of these bacteria were resistant; now 4 percent are. One type has increased from 2 percent to 10 percent. In all, more than 70 kinds of bacteria have developed carbapenem resistance. One type recently identified in Chicago is called carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella, first reported in the U.S. in 2001. It didn't exist in Chicago before 2007, experts say, but by 2011 it had emerged and spread quickly. A state health department survey conducted that year found that every hospital in suburban Cook County and 80 percent of hospitals in Chicago had identified at least one patient infected with it. So far, CRE have been identified only in patients in hospitals, nursing homes and other long-term acute care hospitals, but health professionals say the bacteria could pose a threat to public health if it spreads into the general community. During an outbreak of one type of CRE in 2011 at the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., six patients died from the infection and five died from underlying disease while infected. "CRE are nightmare bacteria," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, said recently. "They pose a triple threat. First, they're resistant to all or nearly all antibiotics. Even some of our last-resort drugs. Second, they have high mortality rates. They kill up to half of people who get serious brains, the sound of growing maturity MCT photo Erica Hillesland holds a petri dish containing cultures of carbapenem-resistant enterobacteraceae. infections with them. And third, they can spread their resistance to other bacteria." For example, carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella could spread genes that interfere with the body's ability to respond to antibiotics to E. coli bacteria, which are the most common cause of urinary tract infections in healthy people. Information about the number of CRE infections is scarce in part because only six states require health facilities to report cases ��� Tennessee, Oregon, Minnesota, Colorado, Wisconsin and North Dakota. The CDC said its surveillance systems pick up the percentage of pathogens resistant to particular drugs, not the number of cases or deaths. Wisconsin, which required hospitals to report CRE infections starting in December 2011, has since identified 25 cases in 17 of the state's 137 hospitals and long-term acute care facilities. Nineteen involved a carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella species; the others were carbapenem-resistant E. coli. The CDC has tracked CRE from a single healthcare facility in one state in 2001 to health care facilities in at least 42 states. In some of those places, these bacteria have become relatively commonplace, Frieden said. CRE are spread by unclean hands, but medical devices such as ventilators or catheters increase the risk of life-threatening infection because they can introduce new bacteria into the bloodstream. The CDC last year recommended that facilities promote proper hand washing by health care workers, remove medical devices such as catheters as soon as possible, isolate patients who are infected or carry the bacteria and make sure that health workers are using protective gloves and gowns when touching patients with CRE, among other things. Frieden urged health facilities to employ a "detect and protect" strategy, which involves identifying the presence of the organism and protecting other patients to prevent its spread. Frieden said health facilities have been successful in controlling CRE by using CDC-recommended prevention and control techniques. But Betsy McCaughey, chairman and founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, a patient advocacy group, said CDC officials haven't gone far enough. She wants the CDC to push for mandatory CRE screenings at hospitals in all states and require public reporting of data. "If patients are going into the hospital for something elective like a hip replacement, they would want to avoid going into a hospital that is battling carbapenem-resistant bacteria," she said. Health authorities advise consumers to take simple precautions to protect themselves, such as frequently washing their hands properly. (MCT) Listening in on the electrical currents of teenagers' brains during sleep, scientists have begun to hear the sound of growing maturity. It happens most intensively between the ages of 12 and 16. After years of frenzied fluctuation, the brain's electrical output during the deepest phase of sleep ��� the delta, or slowwave phase, when a child's brain is undergoing its most restorative rest ��� becomes practically steady. That reduced fluctuation in electroencephalogram signals during delta-phase sleep appears to coincide with what neuroscientists have described as major architectural changes in the brain that pave the way for cognitive maturity. While babies, toddlers and young children are taking in and making sense of the world, their brain cells are wiring themselves together willy-nilly, creating superdense networks of interwoven neurons. But as we reach and progress through adolescence, neuroscientists have observed, a period of intensive "synaptic pruning" occurs in which those networks are thinned and the strongest and most evolutionarily useful remain. In a study published Monday in the American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, scientists from the University of California-Davis say they believe the slowed fluctuations observed during the delta phase of teens' sleep may be evidence of that pruning process at work. And since major mental illnesses such as schizophrenia appear to take root during adolescence, the authors of the study say the changing architecture of sleep revealed by EEG may offer clues as to how and when that process of neuronal pruning goes awry and mental illness sets in. Their data ��� sleep studies of 98 children age 6 to 18, followed for as many as seven years ��� will become available to other researchers. Under a grant by the National Institute of Mental Health, the EEG records of the kids' sleep will be archived with the National Institutes' of Health's National Database for Autism Research. Researchers develop dye to identify brain tumors (MCT) ��� Researchers at Georgia Tech and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta have developed new technology that will help doctors tell tumors from brain matter during surgery. Ravi Bellamkonda at Georgia Tech and Dr. Barun Brahma, a neurosurgeon, talked about finding a simple way to distinguish tumor material from brain matter that would not require expensive imaging technology, which is not available in all hospitals or in many parts of the world. Bellamkonda's laboratory developed an injectible material made out of fat that carries a blue dye. The dye selectively stains the margins of tumors blue, so a doctor can see them clearly. It should help doctors remove tumors more accurately. The research that helped develop the new technique was paid for by Ian's Friends Foundation in Atlanta and the Georgia Cancer Coalition. redbluff.mercy.org www.redbluff.mercy.org Community Basic Life Support Diabetes Education Diabetes Education Waterbirth Class Weekend Childbirth Class Sees Easter Candy Sales 6pm-10pm 1pm-3pm 1pm-3pm 5:30pm-9:30pm 5pm-10pm 8am-4pm 10am-3pm 3/12 3/20 3/27 3/13 3/15 3/16 3/27 2nd Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday Friday Saturday Wednesday Columba Columba Columba Columba Columba Columba Main hall of hospital 529-8026 529-8026 529-8026 529-8026 529-8026 529-8026 736-1326 St. Elizabeth Community Hospital introduces relief from vein pain and varicose veins, our new outpatient procedure. Call our Community Relations Department to learn more as the seminar will launch the last week of March. 529-8038 or email ContactSECH@dignityhealth.org www.redbluff.mercy.org RANDAL S. ELLOWAY DDS IMPLANT DENTISTRY 2426 SO. 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