What normally causes 20 year olds to die from infections?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24960178-12377,00.html
Depends. That particular bacterium is resistant to antibiotic treatment, which means it’s bad news for anybody if they don’t treat it right away. Apparently the doctors mistook her condition for kidney stones.
The infection is what caused her problem.
While underlying factors may make it more likely likely that one dies of an infection, lots of otherwise folks still die from infections every day.
I think you meant to say “otherwise healthy.”
Am I right?
I’m going for a WAG of “bad luck” in her case, including an initial mis-diagnosis of kidney stones instead of urinary infection (if she had been properly diagnosed earlier it may or may not have made a difference).
I’ve had two drug-resistant infections in my life, most recently when I was twice this young woman’s age. Why did I get better and she didn’t? I never even got as sick as her. In 2007 my husband (a man in poor health) and I both had norovirus - it barely made him sick and put me in the hospital for the week - why? You’d think the disabled 50 year old with diabetes and other health problems would be the one in the hospital, not his younger, healthier wife. We both had the same diet so that can’t be it (well, we probably had the same contaminated food which is how we got norovirus, but not a factor in who got more sick)
These things, however tragic, are not always explicable.
Correct.
And to expand a little on my brief response earlier, the real answer is “a lot of times, we don’t know yet”.
There is much work being done to explore what may make otherwise healthy people susceptible to certain infections that some very sick folks manage to shrug off. Otherwise inconsequential metabolic differences, subtle medication interactions or side-effects, etc; the list is legion.
Consider that people with sickle cell trait (not the disease) are more resistant to malaria infection. Or that folks with one copy of the cystic fibrosis gene (it takes 2 copies to have the disease) seem to tolerate cholera infections better.
Conversely, people with G6PD deficiency (which also protects somewhat against malaria) may be living quite normally until they get an infection which causes them to get a hemolytic anemia. The combination of infection and sudden anemia may prove fatal.
Just a few examples of a complex subject
I’ve just had to wrestle with one of my cats to get pills into him because he had a persistant UTI.
The main suspet is one of the Pseudomonas, other antibiotics had not been successful.
I looked up the treatment for him, once the vet had prescribed it, and it seems that this family of bacteria are not easy to deal with, and one warning was given that this antibiotic Baytril - was not only not suitable for humans, its poisonous to us, and its not a good idea to keep animals on it for long either.
According to Wiki, when this family of anitbiotics was discovered it was something of a breakthrough.
Some earlier similar cases: From 2005 From 2007 From 2008
Also, filmmaker Gil Rossellini, brother of Isabella, almost had the same situation. He was infected, probably from a shaving nick, so it was suspected. An opportunistic staph bug apparently made a beachhead, and caused serious problems in his arms and legs–but in his case, they were able to save the limbs, but not before the complications from the infection rendered him a paraplegic with limited use of one arm, but with most of the use of his other arm. It’s documented in his film “Kil Gil, Vol. 1.”
Last fall he died from the ongoing complications from the original infection. In his doc “Kill Gil, Vol. 2,” he shows a lot of the hell he went thru from a pressure sore that developed from his being wheelchair bound. Very gruesome and graphic footage of it.
Just to add to what’s already been said, while this situation is apparently not particularly common, when it does happen, it makes the news. I suspect that most people who are septic either make a full recovery or die, and not survive, but with missing limbs.
One of our local politicians checked into the hospital with a bad back. Turned out he’d developed a staph infection that was resistant to antibiotics. He spent several agony-filled weeks before the infection killed him.
Thanks for the replies, everyone.
The next question is . . . are there any practical steps one can take to lessen the chances of having this sort of problem? For example, if I cut myself, I usually try to rub some alcohol on the cut.
Serious infections can start from remarkably small nicks and cuts. Last summer I realized a tiny zit on my leg was turning into a medical emergency. I demanded a doctor’s appointment that day and wouldn’t take no for an answer - my leg had gone from healthy to almost to painful to walk on in less than 24 hours. I’d say ONE important thing to get be very aggressive about seeking treatment if you have a problem. It seems with at least some of these cases aggressive treatment was delayed for one reason or another. It only stands to reason that the earlier you catch something like this the better off you are.
But… other than usual hygiene, cleaning cuts/scrapes/whatever, and so on I’m not sure there is a lot you can do. These microbes are out there in the world. There really is an element of chance involved.