Skip to main content

California: Wound botulism case investigated in Butte County :Outbreak news

 County health officials in Butte County, California report investigating a case of wound botulism in a Butte County resident who injected drugs, including black tar heroin.

Image/CDC

Laboratory test results to confirm the diagnosis are pending. The source of the heroin is unknown at this time. Black tar heroin has been linked to other wound botulism cases and outbreaks in injection drug users, so there is concern that locally available black tar heroin may be contaminated.

California has the highest rate of wound botulism in the United States. This is the third case reported in Butte County this year.

Since 2016, there have been 22 to 59 cases of wound botulism annually in California. Wound botulism occurs when a wound becomes infected with Clostridium botulinum (the cause of foodborne botulism) or a closely related Clostridium bacterium. The bacteria multiply in the wound and create a toxin that acts on the nerves. Most, but not all, people with wound botulism will have a visibly infected wound. Persons injecting black tar heroin into their muscles (“muscling”) or under their skin (“skin popping”) are at highest risk of wound botulism. Persons with wound botulism cannot transmit the illness to others.

Symptoms of wound botulism occur within days or weeks of injecting contaminated drug and may be mistaken for drug overdose. Symptoms can include weak or drooping eyelids, blurred or double vision, dry mouth, sore throat, slurred speech, trouble swallowing, difficulty breathing, and a progressive symmetric paralysis that begins at the face and head and travels down the body.

If left untreated, symptoms may progress to paralysis of the respiratory muscles, arms, legs, and trunk with subsequent death. Prompt diagnosis and treatment is critical to decreasing the severity and duration of illness. Any injection drug users with symptoms of wound botulism should seek medical attention immediately at the nearest emergency room.


http://outbreaknewstoday.com/california-wound-botulism-case-investigated-in-butte-county-94829/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Can We Make A Vaccine Against Smoking?

  This segment sounds good but we need to be careful here or we end up where we started in 2021 vaccines becoming political. 

Texas governor bans vaccine passports from being required in state ABC News

  Thats Right States like Texas and Florida got the Vaccine Passport Conspiracy from Del Bigtree.  https://abc7.com/politics/texas-governor-bans-vaccine-passport-requirement-in-state/10491161/ AUSTIN, Texas -- Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Tuesday morning prohibiting state agencies or political subdivisions in Texas from creating a "vaccine passport" requirement. Conversation has grown around  vaccine passports recently as an option that can be used for travel or even eating out . They are typically described as an app with a code that verifies if someone has been vaccinated or recently tested negative for COVID-19. They're already in use in Israel, and in development in parts of Europe. But Abbott shut that down as an option in the Lone Star State with Executive Order No. GA - 35 also prohibiting "organizations receiving public funds from requiring consumers to provide documentation of vaccine status in order to receive any service or enter any place....

Anti-Vax Conspiracies strike back in the USA July 2021 Original Article

 Thumbnail credit by Jeff Holiday Production In the past few weeks the anti-vax lobby has ratcheted up the ante on their lobbying efforts. The event that kicked off this new wave of anti-vax scares was the "Knock on the Door rants" according to the Washington Post on a July 9th article they cited  rants by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laurent Boebert in a political rally that sparked the scare. "Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) got the ball rolling Tuesday by comparing the effort to “ medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations .” Not to be outdone, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) took to Twitter the next day to offer her own Nazi comparison, labeling the door-knockers “ needle Nazis .” If anyone should know the folly of such metaphors, it would seem to be Greene, who just three weeks prior conceded in an apology after another wayward Nazi/coronavirus comment that “ there is no comparison to the Holocaust .” And it’s worth emphasizing that there is...