MMWR
cmonforton | December 21, 2016I’m still haunted by the voice on my car radio. It was one of those “NPR moments.”
We were parked at our destination, but there was no way we were getting out of the car. National Public Radio’s (NPR) Howard Berkes was reporting from eastern Kentucky and interviewing Mackie Branham. The 39 year old coal miner gasped for air over every word. Chills ran up my spine. Branham's lungs were hardened by coal mine dust. It was painful to listen yet the perfect punctuation for a powerful story.
Berkes’ reported findings of an NPR investigation of the incidence of the most severe form of coal workers’…
kkrisberg | January 8, 2016These days, there’s a lot of attention on finding new and creative ways to turn around the nation’s opioid abuse and overdose problem. And it’s attention that’s very much needed because the problem is only getting worse.
On the first day of 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published new data on prescription drug and opioid overdose deaths, reporting that more people died from drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2014 than during any other year on record. In fact, during 2014, there were about one-and-a-half more drug overdose deaths than deaths from traffic crashes, with most of…
lborkowski | December 30, 2015During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on August 12, 2015:
by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH
“It’s just like the paper we read in class.” That was the email message I received last week from a former undergraduate student from a class I used to teach called “Health and the Environment.” She was referring to a report of two young children from the Cincinnati, OH area who were lead poisoned because the toxic metal wasn’t controlled at their father’s…
cmonforton | April 24, 2015Researchers with CDC's National Institute for Occupational (NIOSH) report that nearly 16 percent of current asthma cases in US adults are work-related. The reported findings are based on data from the Behaviorial Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Adult Asthma Call-back Survey (ACBS) and reported this month in Morbitity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The survey respondents, made up of adults from 22 states, answered "yes" to the question:
"Have you ever been told by a doctor or other health professional that your asthma was caused by, or your symptoms made worse by, any job you ever…
lborkowski | January 9, 2013By Rebecca Kreston
“Pneumocystis Pneumonia --- Los Angeles,” in the June 5, 1981 edition of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, was an economical seven paragraph clinical report cataloging five observed cases, accompanied by an explanatory editorial note on the rarity of this fungal disease. It seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary from MMWR, a publication that has been issuing the latest epidemiology news and data from around the world for 60 years. The report was included in that week’s slim 16 page report detailing dengue in American travelers visiting the Caribbean,…
cmonforton | June 19, 2012Researchers with the CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) report in the current issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (Vol. 16, No. 23) on the prevalence of dust diseases of the lungs among U.S. surface coal miners. Based on chest x-rays performed on 2,238 workers who work at surface/strip coal mines in 16 States, 46 of them (about 2 percent) had radiographic evidence of coal workers' pneumoconiosis (CWP). The median age of the workers with CWP was only 56 years; the median years of mining experience was 33 years. Especially troubling is the…
mpendergrast | June 21, 2010Mark Pendergrast writes: To kick off this book club discussion of Inside the Outbreaks, I thought I would explain briefly how I came to write the book and then suggest some possible topics for discussion.
The origin of the book goes back to an email I got in 2004 from my old high school and college friend, Andy Vernon, who wrote that I should consider writing the history of the EIS. I emailed back to say that I was honored, but what was the EIS? I had never heard of it. I knew Andy worked on tuberculosis at the CDC, but I didn't know that he had been a state-based EIS officer from 1978…
dblum | February 5, 2010So one summer evening in 2008, a Maryland family sits down to a dinner of home-made beef stew flavored with mint from the backyard and, oh yeah, some other plant growing in the leafy borders by the fence. It looks like this:An hour after dinner, another relative shows up to find the members of the dinner party dazed and incoherent, some giggling uncontrollably, some staggering with hallucinations. Then they start to throw up. The dismayed relative calls 911; by the time all six of the stew-eaters arrive at the emergency room, two are unconscious. All are struggling for breath, their heart-…
terrasig | August 16, 2009
Artemisinin is a natural product isolated from the leaves of the annual wormwood, Artemisia annua. Used originally in Chinese herbal medicine, the pure compound is employed in Africa as an inexpensive antimalarial drug. In April, 2009, the multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis received FDA approval for a combination drug called Coartem®, comprised of the semi-synthetic artemisinin analog, artemether, and another novel antimalarial, lumefantrine.
An herbal preparation of artemesinin has recently been associated with a single case of hepatic injury as reported in this week's issue of…