WI: CDC investigation of 2009-2010 Marathon County blastomycosis outbreak

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Source: http://www.wsau.com/news/articles/2010/jun/04/cdc-help-investigate-marathon-county-blasto-outbre/

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CDC to help investigate Marathon County blasto outbreak
Posted Friday June 4, 2010 1 hour, 39 minutes ago
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WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAU) ? Federal scientists will help Marathon County health officials investigate an outbreak of blastomycosis.

One to three scientists from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention will travel to Wisconsin in the next couple weeks to study why the fungus is still causing people to get sick.

The county health department reported 19 cases between January and the end of March. Thirteen more people have come down with the disease since then, said epidemiologist Ruth Marx. She said they are averaging about one case a week.

Marx said the blasto cases do not fit the normal profile. She said more women and younger people than usual have contracted the illness. Health officials have also noticed clusters of cases that are limited to different geographical areas...

 

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Re: WI: CDC to investigate Marathon County blastomycosis outbreak

Re: WI: CDC to investigate Marathon County blastomycosis outbreak

Source: http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/ar...blastomycosis-in-Marathon-County-commissioned

Case study of blastomycosis in Marathon County commissioned
By Jake Miller ? Wausau Daily Herald ? June 11, 2010

The fungus still is alive in Scott Magrecke's brain.

Found to have blastomycosis on Father's Day of 2008, the 35-year-old has battled the infection -- which commonly attacks the lungs -- for nearly two years.

Evidence of the six months of daily intravenous treatments, speech therapy and walker are gone. The memory loss, deafness in his left ear and antifungal medicine remain very real.

Magrecke's case is atypical; blastomycosis rarely reaches the brain. But it's unusual for another reason: The fungus, found in Marathon County, most often infects men who are 50 to 60 years old, epidemiologists say.

With the number of cases recorded this year already surpassing 2009 totals, the Marathon County Health Department, Wisconsin Department of Health Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have joined forces to study clusters of unusual cases.

"There are a number of questions about this outbreak," said Ruth Marx, an epidemiologist who monitors blastomycosis for Marathon County's health department. "We felt if we could get assistance from experts from this, it's what we're going to do."

So far this year, Marathon County had 34 reported cases as of Thursday, easily surpassing 25 in all of 2009, Marx said...

 

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Re: WI: CDC investigation of 2009-2010 Marathon County blastomycosis outbreak

Source: http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/ar...sians-could-more-prone-disease?nclick_check=1


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Blasto study: Asians could be more prone to the disease
Aug. 10, 2013 3:38 PM |

Written by
Keith Uhlig
Daily Herald Media

A study of the largest outbreak of blastomycosis in the U.S. has led investigators to believe Asian people could be more susceptible to the disease than those of other races.

The outbreak occurred in 2009-10 and involved 55 blastomycosis cases in Marathon County. Twenty of those sickened were Hmong, and investigators from several health agencies ? the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Wisconsin Division of Public Health, the Marathon County Health Department, the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health ? all scrutinized the victims and the disease, looking for trends and potential causes.

Unfortunately, the only thing investigators can say they completely understand about blastomycosis, even after months of research and study, is that it confounds.

Their findings were published June 27 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases in an article entitled ?A Large Community Outbreak of blastomycosis in Wisconsin with Geographic and Ethnic Clustering...?