Rare Infections Show Danger of New Microbes

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9B00E3D61130F934A15...


Four reported episodes of unusual infections around the world have illustrated the surprising potential of new microbes to emerge and old ones to return with a vengeance, scientists say.

The cases include a Nebraska farm boy who caught drug-resistant salmonella from infected cows that had been given antibiotics, Malaysian pig farmers killed by microbes caught from their animals, and hundreds of Italian schoolchildren sickened by a bacteria-contaminated salad of cold corn.

The fourth case was that of a diabetic Atlanta boy who needed bowel surgery twice for a severe bacterial infection contracted after he ate chitterlings at a holiday feast.

''The microbes are challenging us in ways we wouldn't have imagined 10 years ago and for which we're not prepared,'' said Dr. James Hughes, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bacteria and viruses multiply quickly and can therefore evolve rapidly into more aggressive strains.

''On a good day, we hold them at bay,'' said Dr. Michael Osterholm of ican Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minn., an Internet information company focusing on infectious diseases. ''On a bad day, they're winning.''

Dr. Osterholm, who was the Minnesota state epidemiologist for 24 years, wrote an editorial on emerging infections in today's New England Journal of Medicine, which carried reports on the four outbreaks.

Dr. Hughes said it was only a matter of time until another deadly flu epidemic struck the world.

Infectious diseases are the world's No. 1 killer, taking 13 million lives annually. Deadly microbes that have appeared in the last quarter-century include legionnaires' disease, toxic shock syndrome, AIDS, rodent-borne hantaviruses, the airborne Ebola virus, Lyme disease, human cases of a new form of neurological illness linked to mad cow disease in England, West Nile encephalitis in the New York City area and drug-resistant tuberculosis strains in many cities.

The experts cite many factors for the emergence -- and re-emergence -- of deadly germs, including increased international travel and shipment of food; population growth that has put people together in unsanitary conditions, and changes in how food is grown and handled.