is a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a past-president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. For several months, botulism has been making news, but not because someone bought from a fancy roadside stand or served at a church potluck. Or squirted on chips sold at a gas station mini-mart -- yes, this really happened.
Our struck 15 individuals from nine U.S. states who suffered neurologic scares after receiving counterfeit or mishandled botulinum toxin (Botox).
Fair enough. This modern fiasco is a reminder of the people sometimes pay when seeking beauty from a sketchy source. For example, take last year's roughly in Turkey who suffered neurologic harm after receiving intra-gastric botulinum toxin meant to shrink their stomachs.
Is anyone surprised that dubious providers and counterfeit Botox might also hurt folks here in the U.S.? Not me.
But here's what surprise me: just how little we talk about botulism in infants. This is the innocent subgroup who -- for at least two decades -- have comprised of all domestic cases due to the world's most dangerous bacterial toxin. Once spores enter infants' immature guts and produce their pre-synaptic poison , the babies' best hope is for someone to do two things: 1) quickly consider the diagnosis; and 2) obtain life-saving treatment that can prevent weeks to months on a ventilator or even death.
Soon I'll share recent stories of hypotonic infants , the FDA-ap.
