Friday, November 1, 2013

NYC HHC and hospitals et al must make

BCG available to all who seek same.
See also faustmanlab.org and pubmed.org faustman dl
why suffer from autoimmune diseases or asthma or TB when you may be vaccinated to treat, cure and/or prevent same.

Remember the healthcare motto of the US. Lead to the head, safe, cheap and guaranteed effective.
All else expensive, useless, dangerous and try at your own risk.

Hiram Maxim for Mayor, Governor and President.

Manhattan hospital worker may have exposed hundreds of babies to tuberculosis

St. Luke's -Roosevelt Hospital began notifying families Wednesday after a maternity ward employee tested positive for the airborne bacterial infection.

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Updated: Friday, November 1, 2013, 2:57 PM



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 Roosevelt Hospital at 1000 Tenth Avenue

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St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital began notifying parents on Wednesday that a maternity ward worker tested positive for tuberculosis.

Hundreds of newborn babies at a Manhattan hospital may have been exposed to tuberculosis, thanks to a maternity ward worker who tested positive for the contagious and potentially deadly disease.
St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital began notifying parents on Wednesday and alerted the city Health Department immediately after the test results came in.
"We want to asasure everyone that we are taking swift and comprehensive steps to address the situation," the hospital said in a statement. "If you were recently a patient at Roosevelt Hospital and are not notified within the next few days, then you were not in contact with the infected staff member."
The hospital did not identify the worker.
"This employee previously had been tested for TB, and the employee's health survey suggested no problems," the statement said.
RELATED: BIO TEACHER FIRED AFTER STUDENTS SHARE NEEDLES
Nor did the hospital reveal for how far back the exposure goes. But the parents who contacted NBC 4 New York with the TB tip said their children were born more than two months ago.
Hospital officials tried to reassure nervous parents.
"Few individuals exposed to someone with TB become infected because infection generally occurs after continuous exposure over several hours," their statement said. "Still, we are taking the extraordinary precautions that we have to address this issue."
Parents who want their babies tested for TB should contact the hospital. If they choose to have them tested by their private doctors, the hospital will reimburse them "for those expenses not covered by insurance."
"We also notified all hospital workers that may have been in contact with the infected staff member and are providing appropriate evaluation, testing and follow-up," the statement said.
RELATED: 'SUPER GONORRHEA' AND OTHER DRUG-RESISTANT BUGS DEEMED URGENT THREAT BY CDC
Tuberculosis is an airborne bacterial infection that mostly affects the lungs and is curable if detected and treated. Before the development of TB drugs, it was a remorseless killer that claimed millions of lives for centuries.
But new TB strains that have become increasingly resistant to drugs infect about a third of the world's population and kill nearly two million people a year, according to the World Health Organization.
And TB is not just a Third World problem.
The Daily News - citing Health Department statistics - reported in June that TB was rife in the 10457 ZIP code in The Bronx, which includes Tremont and portions of the Crotona, Belmont and Claremont sections.
Also, crowded New York City has endured numerous TB epidemics, including one as recently as 1994.
csiemaszko@nydailynews.com

PLoS One. 2012;7(8):e41756. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041756. Epub 2012 Aug 8.

Proof-of-concept, randomized, controlled clinical trial of Bacillus-Calmette-Guerin for treatment of long-term type 1 diabetes.

Source

The Immunobiology Laboratory, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America. faustman@helix.mgh.harvard.edu

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

No targeted immunotherapies reverse type 1 diabetes in humans. However, in a rodent model of type 1 diabetes, Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) reverses disease by restoring insulin secretion. Specifically, it stimulates innate immunity by inducing the host to produce tumor necrosis factor (TNF), which, in turn, kills disease-causing autoimmune cells and restores pancreatic beta-cell function through regeneration.

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:

Translating these findings to humans, we administered BCG, a generic vaccine, in a proof-of-principle, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of adults with long-term type 1 diabetes (mean: 15.3 years) at one clinical center in North America. Six subjects were randomly assigned to BCG or placebo and compared to self, healthy paired controls (n = 6) or reference subjects with (n = 57) or without (n = 16) type 1 diabetes, depending upon the outcome measure. We monitored weekly blood samples for 20 weeks for insulin-autoreactive T cells, regulatory T cells (Tregs), glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) and other autoantibodies, and C-peptide, a marker of insulin secretion. BCG-treated patients and one placebo-treated patient who, after enrollment, unexpectedly developed acute Epstein-Barr virus infection, a known TNF inducer, exclusively showed increases in dead insulin-autoreactive T cells and induction of Tregs. C-peptide levels (pmol/L) significantly rose transiently in two BCG-treated subjects (means: 3.49 pmol/L [95% CI 2.95-3.8], 2.57 [95% CI 1.65-3.49]) and the EBV-infected subject (3.16 [95% CI 2.54-3.69]) vs.1.65 [95% CI 1.55-3.2] in reference diabetic subjects. BCG-treated subjects each had more than 50% of their C-peptide values above the 95(th) percentile of the reference subjects. The EBV-infected subject had 18% of C-peptide values above this level.

CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:

We conclude that BCG treatment or EBV infection transiently modified the autoimmunity that underlies type 1 diabetes by stimulating the host innate immune response. This suggests that BCG or other stimulators of host innate immunity may have value in the treatment of long-term diabetes.

TRIAL REGISTRATION:

ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00607230.
PMID:
22905105
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

PMCID:
PMC3414482

Free PMC Article

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