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W. Va. doctor says she's caught H1N1 twice now

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  • W. Va. doctor says she's caught H1N1 twice now

    CROSS LANES, W.Va.--A Cross Lanes pediatrician says she came down with swine flu twice in two months, and she's among the medical professionals who are puzzled by the occurrence.

    Dr. Debra Parsons, a pediatrician at Kid Care West in Cross Lanes, said both she and her son came down with identical flu-like symptoms in August.

    Figuring they had the same disease, Parsons swabbed herself and sent the specimen off to a lab. She tested positive for Influenza A, which includes several strains of the flu.

    Health officials say that in this region more than 99 percent of people who have been testing positive for Influenza A are later confirmed to have swine flu.

    Parsons said that was the case with her family; a more specific follow-up "sub-typing" test at the state lab confirmed she had H1N1.

    Parsons and her son recovered from the symptoms but in October they struck again and were much worse, she said. Both had body aches, fever, chills, wheezing, and shortness of breath.

    This time Parsons swabbed both herself and her son, and both tests came back positive for Influenza A. She said she pushed for further testing to determine the strain, and the lab ran an immunofluorescence test on the specimens. They again tested positive for H1N1, she said.

    Parsons' second swab was sent to the state lab Wednesday for even further testing and results should be returned in a couple of days or sent to the Centers for Disease Control for follow-up tests, she said.


    When the initial test came back positive again, Parsons said she also contacted the CDC to see if it's possible for someone to contact the swine flu twice.

    She said officials at the CDC told her Saturday that it is possible


    But in public statements issued in late October the CDC said people who have had H1N1 don't need to get the vaccine because they can't contract the virus again.

    Parsons said she's struggling to make sense of her diagnoses and reconcile them with other information she has heard.

    "I don't want to mislead anybody," Parsons said. "I've been a doctor here 13 years, and I have a ton of patients, and I want to know what to tell them."

    She said her office is doing 10 to 20 flu tests every day as more and more patients come in with symptoms.


  • #2
    Re: W. Va. doctor caught H1N1 twice -confirmed CDC

    CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A West Virginia physician who claimed to have contracted the H1N1 virus twice now has proof -- from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, no less -- that her claims were true.

    Dr. Debra Parsons, a pediatrician at Kid Care West in Cross Lanes, was met with reactions of doubt from local health officials last month when she said two flu tests had come back positive for H1N1, or swine flu.


    Parsons first came down with the virus, complete with all the telltale symptoms, in August.

    Her son became ill at the same time with the same symptoms. Figuring they had the same bug, Parsons tested herself to see what it was.

    The test came back positive for Influenza A, so the lab at Charleston Area Medical Center sent it to be sub-typed. Parsons was positive for H1N1.

    Parsons and her son recovered, but in October they started having the same symptoms, but they became much worse.

    They were both tested this time, and the results were the same -- they were positive for Influenza A and then H1N1.

    "It was swine flu both times," Parsons said.

    Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, and John Law, spokesman for the West Virginia Division of Health and Human Resources, were skeptical of Parsons' claim.

    Law said the possibility of getting the flu twice was "very, very, very rare." Gupta said he was "aware of no data
    or scientific body of research or case reports" that indicated someone could contract H1N1 more than once.

    So the specimen from the Parsons' second flu test was sent to the CDC in Atlanta, where it underwent a preliminary strain reaction test. Parsons says that test is the "gold standard" in differentiating between seasonal and swine flu.

    That sample came back a couple weeks ago, and it was positive for H1N1. The CDC then requested a specimen from Parsons' August flu test.

    Last Friday, the results of that test came back positive for H1N1.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: W. Va. doctor says she's caught H1N1 twice now

      Does anyone know the details about a "preliminary strain reaction test"?

      My understanding was the "gold standard" for flu detection is RT-PCR which has very high sensitivity and virtually zero false detections:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse...chain_reaction

      This is a pretty good animation of PCR:
      (the PCR procedure replicates the genetic materials, thus providing very high sensitivity)

      http://www.bio.davidson.edu/Courses/...sh/RT_PCR.html

      Comment

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