Lifeline: MRSA in pets, and airborne illness
Spreading like the wind: Some diseases march from victim to victim, others fly on the wind, but predicting— quickly—how they do it is tricky.
Christopher Mundt of Oregon State University-Corvallis released a wind-borne wheat fungus in a field and found that the farther it spread, the faster the infection front advanced (American Naturalist). The acceleration fits a simple equation called a power law, which Mundt found also characterized the Irish potato blight of 1845 and the U.S. corn blight of 1970. West Nile virus and H5N1 bird flu have shown similar spread patterns.
The power law applies to diseases spread via the wind or by wide-ranging, unaffected carriers such as birds, says Mundt, including the wind-borne spores of the wheat disease Ug99—meaning time may be short for planting resistant varieties (New Scientist). (It does not apply to diseases mainly spread victim-to-victim.)
Less coverage for women
A new report issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that only 48 percent of working women are able to get health coverage at work, compared with 57 percent of men. Single women are twice as likely to be uninsured as married women, since the former can’t rely on a spouse for insurance. And many of the 14 million women who purchase individual insurance on their own are charged higher premiums than men who buy the same coverage.
Managed-care companies often justify charging women more because they visit doctors more often, have higher health care costs, and face the possibility of pregnancies and hospitalizations to give birth.
MRSA found in pets
Bacteria known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, can cause painful skin infections in people. And increasingly, MRSA is showing up in pets, BBC News reports. A review of studies in July’s Lancet Infectious Diseases showed that humans carrying the bacteria can spread it to a dog, cat, or even a horse. MRSA skin infections then could be transmitted from pets to other people.
One expert who spoke to the news organization said animal bites are a likelier cause of MRSA infections in people. Even an uninfected animal could cause an infection in a person, because MRSA bacteria can be present on the skin of healthy people and could get into and infect a bite wound.
MRSA infections among children are on the rise, according to research released in January. The increasing threat to children compounds a trend toward more community-based MRSA infections; MRSA was previously observed primarily among prisoners, nursing home residents and chronically ill patients, the researchers noted.
Compiled from News wire service sources
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