Risk Of Fungal Meningitis Not Over
While the Center For Disease Control has indicated that a 42 day period from exposure was a good rule of thumb for physicians to use, together with clinical symptoms, when deciding whether to recommend anti-fungal medications to patients exposed to the tainted steroid serum marketed by New England Compounding Center, the deputy chief of the CDC’s Mycotic Disease Branch has admitted that 42 days is no magic number. In fact, he admits that the risk period is a moving target and that the meningitis outbreak caused by the unsanitary conditions at this Massachusetts compounding pharmacy is evolving. The fact is that it has been the experience of Colling Gilbert Wright that physicians, and apparently the CDC itself, are confounded by this outbreak. Studying it will likely be an experiment in itself, and no one exposed to this tainted drug should consider themselves safe just because 42 days has passed with no major symptoms. No one knows how long this fungus can remain dormant in the body, only to be activated during an illness when the body’s immune system is weakened, or for some other inexplicable reason.
If you have been exposed to these tainted steroids, contact us for a free consultation. We already represent almost 35 patients who were exposed to these dangerous drugs.
