Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Case Of Rare Fungal STI Ringworm Reported In US For First Time
A sexually transmitted ringworm caused by a rare fungus has been reported for the first time in the United States. The case report, published Wednesday in JAMA Dermatology by doctors at NYU Langone Health in New York City, comes as clinicians worldwide increasingly say they鈥檙e having trouble treating fungal infections. (Edwards, 6/5)
On salmonella, Zika, pertussis, and TB 鈥
More than 150 people have fallen ill after being exposed to cucumbers that were possibly contaminated with salmonella, the CDC said Wednesday. As of Tuesday, 162 reported illnesses have been linked to cucumbers distributed across 25 states and Washington, D.C. Fifty-four people have been hospitalized and no deaths have been reported, according to the CDC. Many of the people infected were concentrated in Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia and New York. (Archie, 6/6)
Primary Zika virus (ZIKV) infection raised the risk of disease caused by the dengue virus (DENV) 3 serotype and DENV4鈥攂ut not DENV1鈥攊n a cohort of Nicaraguan children, a finding that held true for those infected with DENV before ZIKV but not for those infected with ZIKV before DENV, according to a new study in Science Translational Medicine. (Van Beusekom, 6/5)
It鈥檚 been five years since the last major outbreak of whooping cough in California, but the disease is on the rise. Nationwide, cases of pertussis, as the illness is formally known, are nearly three times higher in 2024 than during the first five months of 2023, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And in California, case counts 鈥渉ave been higher during the first several months of 2024 than in the prior several years,鈥 the state Department of Public Health said in a written statement to The Times. (Castleman, 6/5)
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests US tuberculosis (TB) programs have made strides in identifying patients with TB and latent TB infection (LTBI) and in ensuring they complete treatment in a timely manner. The report, published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, examined the most recent 5 years of data from the National TB Indicators Project, a web-based performance monitoring tool that tracks the performance of state- and city-level TB programs. (Dall, 6/5)
