Measles is still around; rate in 2011 was highest in 15 years

Measles virus (Photo by Scott Camazine/CDC/Getty Images)

In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared measles had been eliminated in the United States. But last year, the nation had the most cases of the infectious disease since 1997.

A report released last week shows there were 222 cases of measles and 17 measles outbreaks in 2011. In a typical year, there are usually just 50 to 60 cases. This year, there have already been 25 cases.

"Of the 222 reported cases, 50 percent were associated with the 17 outbreaks and 90 percent were associated with importations from foreign countries — 26 percent from U.S. residents traveling abroad and 10 percent from foreign visitors," reports Alexandra Sifferlin for Time magazine.

Each case is treated with intense investigation because of the highly contagious nature of the virus. "You can catch measles just by being in a room where someone with measles has been, even if they left," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diesease. "It's serious; one out of three people who got it last year had to be hospitalized." No one died, however.

Of the 196 U.S. residents who contracted the virus last year, 166 had not been or did not know if they had been vaccinated. More than 80 percent of them were eligible for vaccine.

"Many people think diseases like measles are gone and that they do not need to vaccinate themselves or their children," Sifferlin reports. "But the CDC warns measles is still prevalent worldwide. Globally, about 20 million people get measles each year." (Read more)

Kentucky second highest in antibiotic consumption in U.S.

The next time you ask your doctor for an antibiotic, or if he or she offers to give you one, think again. It might do your health no good, but could be bad for public health.

"Every time an antibiotic is used ... future effectiveness of that drug is diminished," but Kentuckians take antibiotics at the second highest rate in the country, with 1,205 prescriptions per 1,000 people, says a study by the Centers for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy. Only West Virginia had a higher rate, 1,214 per 1,000. 

Studies show 1 million antibiotics are prescribed unnecessarily every year. "Though antibiotics offer no benefits for colds and other viral infections, many people, including doctors, continue to view these drugs as a quick fix," said a press release by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which helped fund the study.

The problem with the overuse of antibiotics is that bacterial infections become resistant to them. To illustrate the issue, CDDEP says, "High-level penicillin resistance in Streptococcus pneumonia in the United States has experienced a thousand-fold increase in the last 20 years," rising from 0.02 percent in 1987 to more than 20 percent in 2004. The prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — known more commonly as staph — increased from about 2 percent in 1974 to 50 percent in many U.S. hospitals in 2004.

"The problem of resistance is an evolutionary game played between humans and microbes: we try to stay ahead by creating new antibiotics, and microbes develop resistance to our drugs," CDDEP reports. "Unfortunately for us, microbes evolve resistance to antibiotics faster than we can create new drugs, meaning that, in recent years, bacteria have been winning this 'arms race.'"

Though there is no cure to resistance, managing the levels at which people become resistant is possible through judicious prescribing, vaccination, hospital infection control, treatment strategies and new antibiotics. (Read more)