Don't break out the face masks just yet. Right now, the research is not mature enough to say one way or the other whether you can infect your friends and family with chronic fatigue. But scientists have discovered that two-thirds of people suffering chronic fatigue are also infected with the retrovirus XMRV, which is related to mouse leukemia.

Chronic fatigue is a disease which affects human organs, resulting in feelings of exhaustion, and it affects about 1 million Americans.

According to Science:

Vincent Lombardi and colleagues uncovered the human retrovirus XMRV, which bears a genetic resemblance to a mouse leukemia virus, in 68 of 101 blood samples taken from patients with CFS, while identifying the retrovirus in only eight samples from 218 healthy patients. The researchers show that the XMRV is infectious and can provoke an immune response.

The researchers caution that XMRV does occur commonly in humans, and that there is currently no evidence that there is a causal link between the retrovirus and chronic fatigue. There is, however, enough evidence to merit further investigation.

via Science Express

28 Days Later
Disease: Rage virus
Released by: Animal rights activists
Symptoms: Zombification, flesh-eating
Any humanity left? UK is quarantined and left for dead. Rest of the world survives.



Invasion
Disease: Space fungus
Released by: It clings to the outside of the space shuttle, and when the shuttle crashes people pick up pieces of it and bring the disease into towns, where it spreads.
Symptoms: Lack of emotion, desire for world peace.
Any humanity left? Many people are infected but we're saved by an airborne antidote. We know the world has returned to normal when everybody starts going back to war again.



I Am Legend
Disease: Gene therapy delivered via virus gone wrong
Released by: Well-meaning liberal doctor trying to do good
Symptoms: Zombification, flesh-eating, fear of light.
Any humanity left? Just Will Smith, and (spoilers!) a tiny walled town in New England



Outbreak
Disease: Motaba virus (a fictional version of Ebola)
Released by: Bad guys selling illegal African monkeys to Americans
Symptoms: Barfy bloody death
Any humanity left? Sadly, almost all of humanity survives.



Rabid
Disease: Plastic surgery-induced armpit penis that drinks blood (did we mention this was directed by David Cronenberg in the 70s?)
Released by: Mad surgeon Dr. Keloid, operating on the main character (played by porn star Marilyn Chambers)
Symptoms: Growing a penis-shaped thing under your arm that drinks other people's blood, erases their memories, and turns them into zombies
Any humanity left? Disease is contained within the city.



Andromeda Strain (the miniseries)
Disease: Nano space virus thing
Released by: Fallen satellite
Symptoms: Totally disgusting bloody barfy skin covered in insta-bumps
Any humanity left? Saved by the CDC, but just barely



Doomsday
Disease: Reaper virus
Released by: Unknown, but centered in Scotland, which the UK walls off in a nation-wide quarantine
Symptoms: Death
Any humanity left? Yes, the immune. They have turned into cannibalistic punk rockers, medieval knights, and racecar drivers. Which makes the Reaper virus basically the most awesome thing to ever happen in the UK.



Doom
Disease: A 24th chromosome from Mars
Released by: Union Aerospace Corporation
Symptoms: If you are "good," you are made superhuman with mega-healing, and if you are "bad" you become a flesh-eating toothface with the ability to shoot your tongue at victims to infect them.
Any humanity left? Not on Mars.



World War Z
Disease: African rabies
Released by: Unknown - but thought to have begun in China
Symptoms: Undeath
Any humanity left? Yes, and the shattered survivors of the zombie wars are the subject of the novel, which is being made into a much-anticipated movie right now.



The Signal
Disease: Mind-altering signal sent via television and telephone in an Atlanta-like unnamed city
Released by: Unknown evil media conglomerate
Symptoms: Psychotic, murderous rage; hallucinations
Any humanity left? A few survive in the city; unknown how many more were affected in the world



Quarantine
Disease: Bioweapon
Released by: Doomsday cult
Symptoms: Foaming at the mouth, vampiric quest to bite people
Any humanity left: We see the disease spread rapidly through an apartment building, which is quarantined. There is a hint that the disease has already gotten out and cannot be stopped.

The new case of CJD affected a man whose genetic makeup was of a type researchers call "MV," and it was previously believed to make people immune to the brain disease that causes mental deterioration and death. CJD affects people who eat cows that also have it. During the last outbreak of CJD, only people of the genetic type "MM" were affected.

In an op-ed in Lancet Neurology, the researchers say:

To put it prudently, a second wave of CJD with a longer incubation time might hit these shores, but we do not know whether this will be a tidal wave or just an imperceptible ripple.

One researcher speculated there might be between 50-350 cases in this new wave of infections. It will be harder to track the cases in the short term, however, because the MV infected have a longer incubation time.

[via Nature]

Image via Tips from the Top Floor.

Sometimes the objects are metal pins or paper clips, which makes them easy to pick up on X-rays, say a group of researchers from Chicago who studied the phenomenon in 10 teen girls. The problem is that a lot of people suffering from self-embedding cut themselves and then put objects like wood, stone, or crayons in the wounds. It's estimated that as many as a quarter of all teens engage in some form of self-injury at least once.

Apparently, if you think a patient might be self-embedding, the best thing you can do is examine them using ultrasound. Here you can see staples that a teen has lodged inside her hand. According to the Radiological Society of North America:

Using ultrasound and/or fluoroscopic guidance, interventional pediatric radiologists removed 52 embedded foreign objects from nine of the patients. The embedded objects included metal needles, metal staples, metal paperclips, glass, wood, plastic, graphite (pencil lead), crayon and stone. The objects were embedded during injuries to the arms, ankles, feet, hands and neck. One patient had self-embedded 11 objects, including an unfolded metal paperclip more than six inches in length.

Ultrasound guidance allowed the researchers to detect the presence and location of wood, crayons and plastic objects, not detectable on x-ray examinations. Removal was performed through small incisions in the skin that left little or no scarring and was successful in all cases, without fragmentation or complications.

The radiologists, who are presenting their research today at a meeting of the Radiological Society, say that dealing with self-embedding has helped them come up with techniques that aid in removing any kind of small object in the body without fragmenting the object - a very dangerous problem - and without leaving scars.

Radiologists Diagnose and Treat Self-Embedding Disorder in Teens [via RSNA]

Luckily, the bloggers at EastSouthWestNorth have translated her blog for people who don't read Chinese. The incident started quietly enough, with the student blogging about her friend Jiajia feeling sick and throwing up. But within hours, things started to get weird:

In class today, Yuanyuan said that Jiajia felt sick and has gone to the hospital. At noon, Jiajia came back. She was feeling good enough and she told us that the hospital is filled with Hainan University students with diarrhea. There were many people there waiting to see the doctors. The doctors were so busy that they had to arrange for queues.

Everybody laughed but then we realized that this is serious. I began to wonder whether I have cholera too. I went on the Internet and looked up all sorts of materials about cholera. Then I fell asleep. By around 5pm, I was awaken by several phone calls to say that I had to go down to the school office and get some medicine.

Then a series of events made me dizzy: the school was put under a quarantine; the three entrances were manned by police. Two persons from the School of Tourism were confirmed to have cholera. Many others people were placed under isolation. Jiajia was taken away!

What's interesting about this is how much this student and her friends are communicating about this online, especially using the popular Chinese social network QQ. She is constantly checking her friends' status on QQ, and writing down what they say. One of her friend's QQ signatures reads "TERRIFYING." Another says, "Socialism is good. Socialism cannot feed us."

It's hard not to see this event in the context of growing fears about a SARS-like pandemic breaking out in China and spreading worldwide. In fact, the student keeps talking about how she's terrified that this is going to be like SARS, even though she knows cholera can be treated with a three-day course of medicine. Apparently the authorities were treating this like a beta test for a more dangerous epidemic.

As things developed Monday, the student wrote more:

Cholera has become a part of our my life, along with taking medicine and eating instant noodles. The air smelled like disinfectant and instant noodles . . . I finally decided to go out. I left at 430pm in the hope of being able to get into one of the cafeteria. Today, another cafeteria opened up. There are now two small cafeterias plus the Muslim restaurant to keep the university going.

I read in the Intenet news that the university has been placed under quarantine. It is said that the teachers and students at Hainan University are living normally and remaining mentally stable. But nobody in the entire university campus has told me what the situation is. There are only people coming and going, spraying disinfectant and washing the walls.

Despite the visibility online of people writing about the frightening quarantine, few Western media sources have picked up the story. There was an item in the China Post yesterday, which made it sound as if the event was contained and over.

But yesterday, our student blogger wrote:

I did not think about going down to the cafeteria at all. Perhaps I was scared off by what I saw when I walked past the cafeterias after class. There were crowds out the entrance and the university workers were yelling: "Do not enter. Please do not push. It is already full inside. Even if you get in, you won't get any food." There were many students dressed in camouflage uniforms trying to maintain order. They chased waves and waves of students back out. Even the temporary stands outside the cafeteria for instant noodles were mobbed. There was a notice which said that the cafeteria which re-opened yesterday is closed today because of water stoppage. The workers watched the people from the second floor. As I walked past this cafeteria, I heard a male student yell from the second floor: "I want to eat food, I want to drink water."

When I got back to the dormitory, there were more notices downstairs. Two notices were new: water was stopped and the Internet will be down tomorrow. Everybody howled in collective agony again. I don't think cholera is scary. But the lack of supply of the various essential things in daily life is the true terror.

She's right. And in fact her ongoing coverage of this quarantine reads like a near-future science fiction story because what she's going through is just a small-scale version of what many of us would deal with if a pandemic did break out. In such circumstances it's possible that if a disease doesn't kill you, the quarantine conditions will.

Life in the Time of Cholera [via EastSouthWestNorth]

A report from the medical center at UC San Francisco says:

The bacteria appear to be transmitted most easily through intimate sexual contact, but can spread through casual skin-to-skin contact or contact with contaminated surfaces. The scientists are concerned that it could also soon gain ground in the general population.

The new strain of bacteria is closely related to the MRSA bacteria that have spread beyond hospital borders in recent years and caused outbreaks of severe skin and other infections. But the newly discovered microbe is resistant to many more front-line antibiotics. Both strains are technically known as MRSA USA300.

Like its less antibiotic-resistant sibling, the new multi-drug resistant microbe spreads easily through skin-to-skin contact, invading skin and tissue beneath the skin. Both strains cause abscesses and ulcerations that can progress rapidly to life-threatening infections.

Sexually-active gay men vulnerable to new bacteria [UCSF]