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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- | ||
| First Case of Highly Resistant TB Seen in U.S. | ||
| 2009-12-31 | ||
| It started with a cough, a cool-season hack that refused to go away. Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood. Juarez's strain -- so-called extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB -- has never before been seen in the United States, according to Dr. David Ashkin, one of the nation's leading experts on tuberculosis. XXDR tuberculosis is so rare that only a handful of other people in the world are thought to have had it. "These are the ones we really fear because I'm not sure how we treat them," Ashkin said.
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| Posted by:Uncle Phester |