Meningitis Exposure Patients Wait and Worry

The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Monday, October 22, 2012

Meningitis Exposure Patients Wait and Worry

By DENISE GRADY

Cathy Literski could tell something was wrong just from her mother’s voice on the telephone.

Her mother had learned that a steroid drug injected into her spine for back pain might have been contaminated with a fungus that could cause meningitis. Mrs. Literski had recently had the same type of injections herself, at the same pain clinic in Brighton, Mich. For a moment, neither woman could speak.

“I think we’re both terrified that the other one is going to come down with it,” Mrs. Literski, 57, said. “She’s worried sick about me, and I’m worried sick about her. She’s 80 years old, and if she were to come down with it, she would have very little chance of survival.”

It will be weeks, maybe even months, before the two women know if they are in the clear, past the incubation period for this type of meningitis, which can cause strokes.

About 14,000 people in the United States are in the same nerve-racking situation: knowing they might have been infected, waiting to see if they get sick. So far, 282 have contracted meningitis, and 23 have died, in a national outbreak linked to a contaminated drug made by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass. A few other patients have developed joint infections from having the drug, methylprednisolone, injected into knees, hips, shoulders or elbows.

Three lots of the drug, more than 17,000 vials, were shipped to 23 states. The meningitis and other infections are not contagious.

As the case count rises day by day, experts are racing to see if they can determine which patients among all those exposed are most likely to contract meningitis. If they can identify the high-risk patients, doctors can follow them intensively with spinal taps and other tests in hopes of detecting the disease and treating it early enough to prevent its dreadful complications.

As early as Monday, health officials may be able to offer doctors a method to estimate a patient’s risk and help decide how aggressive the follow-up should be, Dr. Marion Kainer of the Tennessee Health Department said on Friday during a telephone conference.

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