The Best Interesting Random Facts
On June 30, 1994, a 47-year-old man was admitted to a hospital in Arkansas. He was nauseated and his vision was blurry. His speech was slurred, and he was having difficulty swallowing. His gag reflex was impaired. His eyelids were drooping and his face muscles weren’t working properly, he seemed to have some sort of […]
Many consumer products are advertised as having been treated with antimicrobial chemicals. These include not only clothing, but pens, cutting boards, toys, household cleaners, hand lotions, cat litter, soap, cotton swabs, toothbrushes, and various cosmetics. There are children’s pajamas, mattresses, and bed linens for sale that make such claims. The CDC is unequivocal about the […]
Just as going away to college coincides with a high-risk, high-stress period for developing bipolar disorder, so too is enlisting in the military in the late teens and early twenties a recipe for a susceptible individual to have their first episode. The stresses of: boot camp, sleep deprivation, communal living, new surroundings, possibly leaving home […]
More common than C. botulinum, and perhaps as notorious, is the bacterium Escherichia coli. There are hundreds of different serotypes of this gram-negative bacterium, any one of which can cause disease, and many of them are part of the normal bacterial fauna of the intestines. They can get into other parts of the body and […]
Chlamydia is probably the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States, even more common than herpes-2. There were more than 640,000 new cases of chlamydia reported in 2000 and more than 290,000 through the first six months of 2001. Since all diseases are underreported, and since most people with chlamydia are not even […]
In 1918, the flu season came on a bit early, in April, but a few weeks before that 84,000 additional American troops had set out for Europe to fight the Germans, so there were more important things to worry about than the “grippe.” That some people died during the spring was unremarkable, before there were […]
Yes, it is possible to be hospitalized for OCD. This can occur for several reasons. First, it may be a way to help stabilize someone whose rituals have become so problematic that all he or she does all day long is perform rituals. Often in these cases family members will bring someone in to a […]
A lot of people worry about “picking up something” while they’re using public transportation. In New York City, the most feared location for mysophobes is undoubtedly the subway. Everyone squashed together, sneezing, coughing, wiping their noses, and then grabbing those poles to keep from falling over every time the train stops, starts, or lurches. The […]
In 1998, 355,642 cases of gonorrhea were reported to the CDC. This was an 8.9 percent increase from the 1997 rate and the first increase since 1985. In 1999, the latest year for which complete figures are available, 360,076 cases of gonorrhea were reported, a 9.2 percent increase over the 1997 rate and a 1.2 […]
Ever get your nails done at a nail salon? A lot of people do: nail care is a $6 billion a year industry in the United States, and there are tens of thousands of nail salons all across the country, 7,500 in California alone. One day in 2001 a dermatologist called the health department and […]
Shocking but true: your toothbrush is dirtier than your toilet seat. It is hard to predict exactly which germs are on your toothbrush right now, but staphylococci, coliforms, pseudomonads, streptococci, and at least one fungus, candida, have all been cultured from used toothbrushes. In one Australian study, staphylococci and streptococci were the most commonly found […]
E. coli O157:H7 is a threat with young children not only because it can make them quite ill, but also because they can shed it in their feces for up to two weeks after their illness resolves, giving them plenty of opportunity to pass the disease on to others. Older children don’t usually carry the […]
Pyromania is, according to the DSM-IV-TR (2000), “deliberate and purposeful fire setting on more than one occasion.” Prior to the act of fire setting, there is an increase in tension, and there is a long-held fascination with fire. Once the fire is set, there is a sense of relief or joy. Fires set by people […]
Giardia lamblia is the other common protozoan parasite that infests drinking water. During the 1990s, reports of giardiasis increased all over the country. In 1997–1998, the latest years for which the CDC has published statistics, New York State, including New York City, had the largest number of cases, 3,673. But before you conclude from this […]
This is actually a more common OCD experience than people would think: You saw a story on the news about a hit-and-run accident in the town next to yours. You called the police to tell them you might have done it, and they came to your house and questioned you. When you told them you […]
Here are some facts you might want to consider before proceeding with piercing your belly button. There is always risk when you have any part of your body pierced. It is minor surgery and should be treated as such. With navel piercings, you are at a higher than average risk for infection for two reasons. […]
How do we find out about new strains in time to develop new vaccines against them? The World Health Organization, in cooperation with dozens of other national and international health groups, maintains the Global Outbreak Alert and Response program to provide continuous surveillance of infectious disease outbreaks around the world. This program covers all kinds […]
The Italians call it the French disease; the French call it the English disease. Russians blamed the Poles, the Poles blamed the Germans. At least since the sixteenth century, Europeans have been blaming each other, if it isn’t English, French, Polish, Russian, or German, then it’s Venetian or Neapolitan. Some believe Columbus brought it back […]
Here’s a word we hope you’ve never heard before: myiasis. Myiasis refers to diseases caused by the deposition of insects or insect larvae in living tissue. And this happens in real life, in both animals and man, and not just in horror movies. One Indian boy, it was reported in 2001, actually had a wound […]
Rubbing on insect repellent and slapping at mosquitoes is a summertime tradition. Just the smell of a spritz of Off! gives some people Proustian recollections of fun-filled days at summer camp. But until the 1920s, mosquitoes were a cause of deadly epidemics in the United States, and everyone now knows that they’re back again carrying […]
You may think that sexually transmitted infections are someone else’s problem, but in fact 55 million Americans have at least one sexually transmitted disease (STD). More than 45 million Americans have HSV-2, the sexually transmitted form of the herpes simplex virus, and a million more get it every year. There’s no cure for it. Two […]
Bacteriologists are quite proud when their name becomes attached to a disease causing organism. This is not true of other people, American Legion members are not at all happy about having Legionnaire’s disease named after them, and homeowners and real estate agents in Lyme, Connecticut, could have done without having their city’s name permanently attached […]
In May 2001, a Swedish researcher named Carl Erik Nord made news by announcing at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology that the bacteria that causes severe acne, Propionibacterium acnes, were developing resistance to the antibiotics used to treat the affliction. This may have been news to the reporter who wrote the […]
In late August 1999, the New York City Department of Health discovered an unusual outbreak of encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) concentrated among a group of elderly people living not far from La Guardia Airport in the northern part of Queens, one of New York City’s five boroughs. The Department of Health, in cooperation with […]
On July 15, 1994, the New Jersey State Department of Health reported to the CDC that six people who had traveled to Bermuda on the cruise ship Horizon had come down with pneumonia. The CDC quickly discovered that 14 people on the ship had been infected with Legionnaire’s disease. It was pretty clear that the […]
Kids are unquestionably messy, and the younger they are the messier they seem to be. Growing up involves an incessant series of encounters with germs of all kinds. Babies begin by fouling themselves with germ-laden feces, then as soon as they’re able to they start putting everything they can lift into their mouths. Next they […]
We often speak of the possibility and desirability of eradicating diseases, and it does seem that it should be possible to eradicate at least those whose causes we know and for which we have good and effective treatments. This would seem to apply to most of the sexually transmitted diseases. But in all of history, […]
Prozac (generic name: fluoxetine) was one of the first new antidepressants classified as an SSRI, and it is still popular. Prozac helps the body increase serotonin at low doses and norepinephrine at higher doses. Research has also demonstrated that, like most antidepressants, Prozac helps the brain produce more of the natural neurochemicals that heal brain […]
On November 8, 1999, a company in Anchorage, Alaska, threw a party for their 500 employees, a nice catered lunch. On November 10, employees started calling in sick, not just a few, but hundreds of them. On the same day, the company notified the Alaska Division of Public Health that they had some kind of […]
Although the FTC doesn’t regulate the production or labeling of over the counter drugs, it does have a say in the way they are advertised. And they can be just as fussy as the FDA when it comes to making claims about antibacterial products. A complaint the FTC filed against Unilever in 1999 is illustrative. […]
Not widely recognized in the United States, sorghum is the world’s third largest grain crop. As a whole grain, sorghum is also known as milo or kafir and is a key ingredient in regions of India and Africa. Sorghum grains are small and bead-like with a beige color. Like millet, sorghum is bland and dry, […]
Since 1989, when it surpassed the number of outbreaks caused by salmonella, Campylobacter has been the most common cause of bacterial gastroenteritis in the United States. An estimated 2.4 million people get infected with it every year. It’s a gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium, and there are three species of it that cause human disease. C. coli […]
John Lynn, of Austin, Texas, thinks people don’t wash their hands often enough, and he thinks it’s about time someone did something about it. According to Patent Number 6,147,607, Mr. Lynn has designed a way of preventing people from slipping away from the bathroom without washing. He proposes a mechanism attached to a toilet handle […]
Rotavirus is a good example of the kind of disease that is easily transmitted in child care settings. There are others as well, most of them considerably less serious in their effects than rotavirus, but nevertheless things to watch out for. Among them is hepatitis A (HAV). Although there is a vaccine for it, hepatitis […]
Why do they print directions on the back of your liquid antibacterial hand soap bottle? Do you really need “directions” on how to use soap? Antibacterial products used to clean bathrooms or kitchen sinks are not drugs, and therefore their labeling is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. Same for ordinary (i.e., non-antibacterial) soap. But […]
In the late summer and fall of 1998 Listeria monocytogenes, a gram-positive bacterium that lives everywhere in the world except Antarctica, caused about 40 illnesses in ten different U.S. states. The CDC in cooperation with state health departments in Connecticut, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee determined that all these cases came from a single strain […]