The Health Blog

May 29, 2007 — The CDC today announced that a U.S. traveler may have put his fellow fliers at risk for a potentially deadly form of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

The traveler, an unnamed man from Atlanta, has extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB), which is rare but can cause serious illness and death.

XDR TB is an infectious disease spread from person to person through the air. But unlike most tuberculosis cases, XDR TB resists the first and second preferred drug treatments.

While XDR TB is rare, it can cause severe illness and death and is an emerging problem worldwide, CDC director Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, told reporters in a news conference.

In light of the man’s condition, the CDC issued its first federal quarantine order since 1963 for the patient. He is under medical isolation in Atlanta and will remain quarantined until public health officials deem him no longer a public health threat.

The CDC is also encouraging other passengers on the man’s flights to get tested for tuberculosis.
Patient’s Flights

Popular detox diets promise to flush poisons from your body, purge pounds of excess fat, clear your complexion and bolster your immune system.

But experts say there’s little evidence that extreme regimens such as the Master Cleanse or Fruit Flush do anything more than lead to unpleasant, unhealthy side effects.

Still, these super-restrictive eating plans are hotter than ever, thanks to being linked to lanky celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie. Beyonce Knowles attributed her 20-pound weight loss for the movie “Dreamgirls” to the Master Cleanse — a starvation diet whose adherents swallow nothing but a concoction of lemon juice mixed with maple syrup, water and cayenne pepper, as well as salt water and a laxative tea for 10 days.

The idea of detoxifying or purifying the body of harmful substances has been around for centuries and cycles back into popularity now and again. There are no hard numbers on how many people have tried the latest fashionable plans, much less stuck with them, but dozens of new do-it-yourself fasting books are glutting bookstore shelves.

Listening to tunes on an iPod may be great for putting a skip in your step, but it can also play havoc with a heart pacemaker, a new study found.

A study by a Michigan high school senior along with several doctors found out that the portable music players caused pacemakers to malfunction in 50 percent of patients.

The biggest concern is that pacemakers store the history of a heart’s rhythms, said Jay Thaker, the Okemos High School student, who worked with several doctors on the research. “If a physician was to go back and look at that (history), the physician might think that the patient was having abnormal heart rhythms,” he added.

This effect may pose danger to heart patients which might be treated for conditions that aren’t really present. Further, if an iPod stopped a pacemaker from working in a patient who was totally dependent on their pacemaker, it could cause the heart to stop.

Some 600 primary schools across Thailand have vowed to ban sugary drinks from the playground and classroom in an effort to curb soaring child obesity rates in the kingdom, AFP reports.

This campaign is a response to the growing cases of obesity and tooth cavities among children in Thailand. In a recent survey, it was found out that Thai children were consuming an average 20 teaspoons of sugar a day, when they should be limiting their intake to six a day.

Chantana Ungchusak, a dentist in charge of the campaign, said the project aimed to educate children from kindergarten up to primary school about limiting their sugar consumption.

With the aid of new technology on research, some of the New York University scientists found new species of microbes in human skin. They swabbed the forearms of six healthy subjects, three men and three women.

Genetic analyses of the samples revealed a total of 182 species of bacteria, some of which have never been described by scientists. The samples include the normal flora of the skin, Staphylococcus and Streptococcus and other bacterial species. Amazingly, nearly three-fourths of the total microbial species were unique to individual subjects, and only four of the species dwelled on all subjects. The researchers suggests that the sex-specific findings may show that each human being provides a unique habitat for the microbes. Further, it may sugge skin attributes such as acidity might differ between men and women and lead to sex-specific bacterial residents.