The mosquito virus chikungunya has left almost 500,000 people ill, and 109 of them are newborn babies, according to an official in the Dominican Republic hit by the disease.

The newborns contracted the illness from their mothers, who were ill while giving birth, Carmen Adames, the Health Ministry's coordinator dealing with the outbreak, told AP. None of the children have died, she added.

The symptoms of the disease take three to seven days to appear, and include high fever, severe headaches and joint pain that can render a person virtually immobile for months. Research in the Indian Ocean islands has demonstrated that patients can suffer joint pains for as long as two years, depending on their age.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa could spread to hundreds of thousands more people by the end of January, according to an estimate under development by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that puts one worst-case scenario at 550,000 or more infections.

The report, scheduled to be released next week, was described by two people familiar with its contents, who asked to remain anonymous because it isn't yet public.

The projection, which vastly outstrips previous estimates, is under review by researchers and may change. It assumes no additional aid or intervention by governments and relief agencies, which are mobilizing to contain the Ebola outbreak before it spirals further out of control in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

"CDC is working on a dynamic modeling tool that allows for recalculations of projected Ebola cases over time," Barbara Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an e-mail. "CDC expects to release this interactive tool and a description of its use soon."

The World Health Organization said last month that the outbreak could reach 20,000 cases before being brought under control. That projection is already outdated, WHO spokesman Dan Epstein said yesterday in a phone interview.

The deaths of 10 people in the past week of a mysterious disease in several cities in Venezuela, including the capital of Caracas, have caused panic within the population and has prompted doctors to sound the alarm.

A government spokesman minimized the warnings and described efforts to notify the public of a disease that has killed four adults and four children as a "campaign of disinformation and terrorism."

Despite the government's indifference, the country's doctors insist there is plenty of reason for concern about a highly dangerous and contagious disease of unknown origin.

"We do not know what it is," admitted Duglas León Natera, president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.

In its initial stages, the disease presents symptoms of fever and spots on the skin, and then produces large blisters and internal and external bleeding, according to data provided week stop by the College of Physicians of the state of Aragua, where the first cases were reported.

Then, very quickly, patients suffer from respiratory failure, liver failure and kidney failure. Venezuelan doctors have not been able to determine what the disease is, much less how to fight it.

The government has denied the existence of "a mysterious disease" and described the information provided by the doctors as a "media campaign against Venezuela."

The governor of the state of Aragua, Tarek El-Aissami and Communications Minister Delcy Rodriguez, refer to the warnings as a "defamatory" strategy to "distress to the population."

Some theories being examined include the possibility that the disease could be a new type of very aggressive and severe dengue, an atypical version of the Chikunguña fever or an Ebola virus appearance in Venezuela.

The UN has halted a measles vaccination campaign in northern Syria after at least 15 children died after receiving shots, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed in a joint statement.

"UNICEF and WHO have been shocked and saddened to learn of the deaths of at least 15 young children in Idlib, Syria," the statement said. "The deaths of the children occurred in areas where a measles immunization campaign had been under way."

The children were all under the age of two, Reuters reported, citing aid workers.

Around one hour after being given a second round of the measles vaccine in Idlib on Tuesday, the children demonstrated signs of "severe allergic shock," said Abdullah Ajaj, a physician administering the vaccinations at a medical center in Jarjanaz, according to AP. The second round of vaccinations began in Idlib and Deir Ezzour on Monday.

There is a real possibility that Ebola could mutate into a virus that is as spreadable as the flu, one of the nation's top Ebola researchers tells Newsmax Health.

"I don't want to be an alarmist, but the possibility of Ebola becoming an airborne virus clearly has to be taken into account," said David Sanders, associate professor of biological sciences at Purdue University.

"Ebola does share some of the characteristics of airborne viruses like influenza and we should not disregard the possibility of it evolving into something that could be transmitted in this way," added Sanders, whose work on Ebola led to his participation in the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program.

Schizophrenia is associated with increased rates and intensity of tobacco smoking. A growing body of research suggests that the relationship between schizophrenia and smoking stems, in part, from an effort by patients to use nicotine to self-medicate symptoms and cognitive impairment associated with the disease.

A new study, published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, sheds light on this hypothesis. The authors found that the level of nicotine receptors in the brain was lower in schizophrenia patients than in a matched healthy group. Further, smoking, which is known to increase the levels of receptors for nicotine in the brain, had this effect in both groups, although was blunted in schizophrenia.

However, in the schizophrenia group, the smoking-related increase in the level of nicotine receptors was associated with lower levels of social withdrawal, blunted emotional and motivational responses, as well as better cognitive function.

Nicotine mimics the actions of a natural chemical messenger, acetylcholine, which stimulates the receptors for nicotine in the brain. So, to conduct this work, Yale University School of Medicine researchers used single photon emission computed tomography to quantify the availability of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (β2*-nAChRs) in smoking and nonsmoking individuals with schizophrenia and healthy subjects.

Healthcare workers play a very important role in the successful containment of outbreaks of infectious diseases like Ebola. The correct type and level of personal protective equipment (PPE) ensures that healthcare workers remain healthy throughout an outbreak - and with the current rapidly expanding Ebola outbreak in West Africa, it's imperative to favor more conservative measures. The precautionary principle - that any action designed to reduce risk should not await scientific certainty - compels the use of respiratory protection for a pathogen like Ebola virus that has:

• No proven pre- or post-exposure treatment modalities
• A high case-fatality rate
• Unclear modes of transmission

We believe there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks.¹

The minimum level of protection in high-risk settings should be a respirator with an assigned protection factor greater than 10. A powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) with a hood or helmet offers many advantages over an N95 filtering facepiece or similar respirator, being more protective, comfortable, and cost-effective in the long run.

We strongly urge the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to seek funds for the purchase and transport of PAPRs to all healthcare workers currently fighting the battle against Ebola throughout Africa - and beyond.

There has been a lot of on-line and published controversy about whether Ebola virus can be transmitted via aerosols. Most scientific and medical personnel, along with public health organizations, have been unequivocal in their statements that Ebola can be transmitted only by direct contact with virus-laden fluids^2,3 and that the only modes of transmission we should be concerned with are those termed "droplet" and "contact."

These statements are based on two lines of reasoning. The first is that no one located at a distance from an infected individual has contracted the disease, or the converse, every person infected has had (or must have had) "direct" contact with the body fluids of an infected person.

This reflects an incorrect and outmoded understanding of infectious aerosols, which has been institutionalized in policies, language, culture, and approaches to infection control. We will address this below. Briefly, however, the important points are that virus-laden bodily fluids may be aerosolized and inhaled while a person is in proximity to an infectious person and that a wide range of particle sizes can be inhaled and deposited throughout the respiratory tract.

The second line of reasoning is that respirators or other control measures for infectious aerosols cannot be recommended in developing countries because the resources, time, and/or understanding for such measures are lacking.⁴

Although there are some important barriers to the use of respirators, especially PAPRs, in developing countries, healthcare workers everywhere deserve and should be afforded the same best-practice types of protection, regardless of costs and resources. Every healthcare worker is a precious commodity whose well-being ensures everyone is protected.

If we are willing to offer infected US healthcare workers expensive treatments and experimental drugs free of charge when most of the world has no access to them, we wonder why we are unwilling to find the resources to provide appropriate levels of comparatively less expensive respiratory protection to every healthcare worker around the world.

The rare respiratory illness affecting children across the country has now spread to at least 19 states, with confirmed cases in California, Minnesota and New Jersey, public health officials confirmed Thursday.

This rare virus strain, known as enterovirus 68, can cause severe breathing problems. There have now been 153 confirmed cases across the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it is believed that many more people have the virus and that it will appear in additional states in the near future.

Minnesota and New Jersey are just the latest places with this virus, joining a list of states that has lengthened as testing confirms cases. The other states are Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia.

Public health officials say other states are expected to join this list, as cases could likely be confirmed in other places where there have been clusters of children suffering from respiratory illnesses.

There are suspected cases in Georgia and Michigan, while health officials in Ohio and Utah have told The Post they suspect that they have cases of the virus.

Enteroviruses are very common, causing between 10 million and 15 million infections each year. Most enterovirus infections in the United States occur in the summer and fall, so these are coming at a typical time, Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters last week.

• 200 girls have come down with symptoms from faintness to numb hands
• The girls, aged between nine and 16, all injected with vaccine Gardasil
• Parents blame authorities and the drug's American manufacturer, Merck
• But Health Minister says there is no evidence that vaccine is to blame
• Local doctor says symptoms began in May and have increased since

A mystery illness has overwhelmed a small town in northern Colombia as scores of teenage girls have been hospitalized with symptoms that parents fear could be an adverse reaction to a popular vaccine against cervical cancer.

Authorities say they still don't know what caused more than 200 girls in El Carmen de Bolivar to come down with symptoms ranging from fainting to numbness in the hands and headaches.

Some have hinted that the town of 95,000 near Colombia's Caribbean coast could be experiencing a rare case of mass hysteria.


Parents are on edge however because all the girls, ranging in ages from 9 to 16, were injected in recent months with the vaccine Gardasil. On Wednesday, residents marched peacefully to demand a thorough investigation.

Francisco Vega, the town's mayor and a trained physician, told The Associated Press that illnesses first appeared at the end of May and have been steadily increasing since. Over the weekend 120 girls were rushed to hospitals, collapsing the town's limited medical facilities. None of their symptoms were life-threatening and all have since been released, he said.

We could potentially be on the verge of the greatest health crisis that any of us have ever seen. The number of Ebola cases in Africa has approximately doubled over the past three weeks, and scientific computer models tell us that this Ebola pandemic could ultimately end up killing millions of us - especially if it starts spreading on other continents. At first, many assumed that this Ebola outbreak would be just like all the others - that it would flare up for a little while and then it would completely fade away. But that has not happened this time. Instead, this epidemic has seemed to pick up momentum with each passing week. Despite extraordinary precautions, hundreds of health workers have gotten the virus, and the head of the CDC says that the spread of Ebola is "spiraling out of control" and that it is "going to get worse in the very near future." For those that have thought that all of this talk about Ebola was just "fearmongering", it is time for you to wake up.