US - Oklahoma TB Patient Found

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TB patient isolated after failing to comply with treatment plan

By Associated Press
4/3/2008 8:58 AM

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A man with tuberculosis has been placed in isolation at the Oklahoma County jail after failing to comply with health officials' requests that he stay in a local hotel while the disease was treated.

XXXXXXXX, 56, was notified of the diagnosis March 20. He has been in jail since Monday, but health officials are trying to find another place for him to stay while he is treated.

Officials wanted to limit Lusty's contact with other people after learning he might have infectious TB.

Lusty originally agreed to undergo the necessary treatment, but he missed daily checks by the Oklahoma City-County Health Department after about four days.

That led the state Health Department to ask an Oklahoma County judge to intervene last week.

Lusty's treatment likely will last six months or more, said Dr. Dale G. Claflin, medical director for the city-county health department.

Claflin said officials tracked down Lusty as the likely source of infection for a child diagnosed with TB at an Oklahoma County hospital last summer.

He declined to release any additional details about the child because of privacy concerns.

The communicable disease is caused by bacteria that usually attack the lungs, but the bacteria can attack any part of the body such as the kidney, spine, and brain. If not treated properly, tuberculosis can be fatal.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080403_12_OKLAH80155

 

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Re: US - Oklahoma TB Patient Found

Officials say organ recipients caught tuberculosis from donor

by: Associated Press
4/4/2008 12:00 AM

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Two Texas women who received the kidneys of a man contracted tuberculosis as a result, and one of them died, health officials have said.

The 46-year-old organ donor had not been diagnosed with the disease and had tested negative for tuberculosis six months before he died in June. A report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the case noted the man did have risk factors for the disease, including a history of alcoholism, incarceration and homelessness.

Three weeks after the donor died, the Oklahoma Department of Health learned he had the disease.

A 50-year-old woman who received one kidney died nine weeks after the transplant, while a 23-year-old woman who received the other kidney has responded well to treatment for tuberculosis, according to the report.

A 59-year-old Texas man who received the donor's liver has not contracted the illness.

The identities of the donor and the recipients were not included in the CDC report.

Even though organ recipients typically receive medications to suppress their immune systems -- an effort to keep their bodies from rejecting the donated organ -- it is rare for a recipient to contract a disease because of a transplant, said Emily Piercefield, an epidemiologist from the CDC assigned to Oklahoma's Health Department.

A CDC study indicated that 4 percent of tuberculosis infections were donor-derived.

Phil Van Stavern, a spokesman for LifeShare -- a company that helped with the organ donation in question -- said the donor had been properly screened and was deemed safe.

"I don't see that we could have done anything more than we did," Van Stavern said.

Piercefield said family members answered questions for the man, who was in a coma, and might have given inaccurate answers during the screening. The man had no history of tuberculosis, according to the report.

She said that the screening of potential donors should include questions more specific to tuberculosis, such as if a person has traveled to a foreign country or been in a high-risk environment to contract the illness.

Tuberculosis is a communicable disease caused by bacteria that usually attack the lungs, but the bacteria can attack any part of the body such as the kidney, spine, and brain. If not treated properly, tuberculosis can be fatal.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080404_12_OKLAH36667