Very Sick, and Now a Curiosity
By DENISE GRADY
Published: December 21, 2009
Michelle Barnes never imagined that her vacation to Uganda would make her a medical celebrity.
Ms. Barnes, 44, became ill in January 2008, a few days after returning home to Golden, Colo. At first, she seemed to have a typical case of traveler’s diarrhea, but she soon worsened. She broke out in a rash and developed abdominal pain, terrible fatigue, weakness and confusion. Blood tests found her white-cell count low and her liver and kidneys beginning to fail. She was hospitalized, still deteriorating. Her blood was taking too long to clot, and her pancreas and her muscles were inflamed.
Tests for a long list of tropical diseases all came up negative. Doctors were stumped. Their best diagnosis was, “basically, some undefined viral illness,” said Dr. Norman K. Fujita, an infectious disease specialist.
Ms. Barnes spent 10 days in the hospital. After that, her recovery was long and slow, with many months of fatigue, abdominal pain and mental fog. She returned to work, as an interim director for nonprofit groups, but went home exhausted at night.
“I felt like I was really jet-lagged all the time,” she said.
Seven months after she left the hospital, a news article caught her attention. A Dutch woman who had also traveled to Uganda had died from Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a viral disease. She was thought to have contracted it from exposure to bats and their droppings in the Python Cave, in the Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. (The cave has since been closed.)
Ms. Barnes had visited the same cave. Although she had already been tested for Marburg, she asked Dr. Fujita to test her again. This time, more sensitive tests were used, and they came back positive.
It was a sobering result. The Marburg virus had never before reached North America, as far as experts know. It is a close relative of Ebola, and the diseases these viruses cause are among the world’s most dreaded, because they can have horrific symptoms and high death rates and are easily transmitted by bodily fluids. There is no vaccine, cure or even specific treatment.
Infectious disease experts had warned for years that someday an infected person might board a plane and carry one of these deadly viruses halfway around the world, potentially exposing countless others along the way. Now it had happened.
But Ms. Barnes survived, and no one else became infected, even though epidemiologists calculated that 260 people — hospital and lab workers, friends and family — had potentially been exposed.
The first detailed report on her puzzling case was published in the Dec. 18 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ms. Barnes and her husband had entered the bat cave with a group, and yet only she became sick. The reason is unknown, but she thought she might have touched guano-soiled rocks and then covered her nose and mouth with her hands because the cave smelled so bad.
It is also unclear why she survived, but Dr. Eileen Farnon, an epidemiologist at the disease centers, said Ms. Barnes was healthy and fit, received excellent care and might have taken in a small dose of the virus. Even though Ms. Barnes took more than a year to recover fully, she had a fairly mild case, as Marburg goes.
She probably did not infect anyone else, Dr. Farnon said, at least in part because Dr. Fujita was astute and cautious enough to order “contact precautions,” meaning gloves and gowns, for everyone who came in contact with her at the hospital.
When scientists trying to develop a Marburg vaccine at the National Institutes of Health heard about Ms. Barnes, they were eager to take blood samples from her. She agreed. They invited her and Dr. Fujita to Bethesda, Md., last June, to present her case to a standing-room-only crowd of researchers who had never seen a Marburg survivor.
Dr. Julie E. Ledgerwood, deputy chief of the clinical trials core of the vaccine research center, said scientists there were still studying Ms. Barnes’s immune response, for clues that would help them determine what a vaccine should do.
Ms. Barnes said she was happy to help. “It’s a horrible thing to get Marburg and I don’t wish it on anyone,” she said. “But if you can be part of helping to find the vaccine, that’s great.”
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The "Marburg" virus is one virus mentioned in Robert Preston's Book "The Hot Zone".
Its a Viral hemorrhagic disease (like Ebola Zaire) you don't want to get. Only Marburg doesn't have high mortality rate as "Ebola Zaire"..That just seems to make "Marburg" even more dreaded... This disease got its name for an outbreak that got started in Germany.
In 2005 there were 300 fatalities (lots of children) in Angola, reported to be caused by an outbreak of Marburg.. Now doctors have reported a case of this in the U.S.
I mentioned it because all though this story didn't get much play in the media, you can bet that "Marburg" is alot more dangerous than H1N1 and it represent a more integral problem than the recent hysteria over the failed bomb attempt over the U.S Airlines.
A radio medical Personality mention that the person carrying the virus, probably transported from Africa to the U.S over the Airlines carrying "Marburg".... It was fortunate that no other persons were infected, ("That we the "public" know of"). It is fortunate that this person was able to get the health care that was needed, and that many other weren't infected (That we know of). If you think the hysteria over H1N1 was bad,what would happen in an outbreak of Marburg in the U.S?
It make you wonder just how secure our we in this country, , probably alot less than you think. If Marburg can get here overseas via the airlines, what about other pathogens like "Ebola Zaire", or something like Smallpox? How would the U.S deal with outbreak of these pathogens like these? How could the Airlines or the Department of Homeland Security prevent this from happening much less prevent a dedicated "terrorist" from spreading an outbreak of this in the U.S.
Now Americans are hung up on the idea of of terrorist exploding a plane, full of people, but a dedicated, well financed terrorist could probably do alot worse,than murdering lots of people on an Airplane. yet because of media spin doctors, they've labeled the "would-be-terrorist" as an "Islamic fundamentalist". Subscribers to these spin doctors are ready to bomb the "terrorist" country with nuclear weapons to end the threat, in Yemen or Nigeria,but there is a much bigger threat looming here in the U.S. Bombing Yemen, Sending troops in Afghanistan,installing body detectors in Airports, a Nuclear response in Yemen, Iran or Nigeria won't help much.
Perhaps the President Barack Obama must be aware of this and did try to do something by starting an initiative to improve health care in the U.S.
Without adequate health care in this country all types of people are going to be vulnerable to problems like this not just the poor, and any kind of outbreak like "Marburg" this in the U.S would have the potential to bring the Country to a standstill.
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