A 66-year-old woman in Macon has become Georgia’s first case in the national outbreak of meningitis related to contaminated steroid injections used for pain, state officials said Tuesday.
The woman is in stable condition and has not required hospitalization. She remains under the care of an infectious disease specialist, according to the state Department of Public Health.
“Clinically she doesn’t appear to be that sick,” said Dr. Patrick O’Neal, the agency’s director of health protection, “but we feel an abundance of caution is needed.”
The woman began showing symptoms, including a headache, after receiving an epidural injection for back pain at the Forsyth Street Ambulatory Surgery Center in Macon. This was the only facility in Georgia that received the contaminated drug — preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate — from one of three implicated lots prepared by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass.
The outbreak has sickened more than 300 people, including 23 who died in 17 states, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meningitis is an inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, which can cause stroke, brain damage and even death. These infections are not transmitted person-to-person. A handful of infections linked to the outbreak have occurred due to contaminated injections to joints.
Georgia public health officials have sent out 32,000 emails alerting physicians and health care workers of the symptoms, which include fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea and vomiting, sensitivity to light and altered mental status.
The federal Food and Drug Administration is investigating at least two other drugs produced by the New England Compounding Center. These include a drug used in eye surgery and a drug used to paralyze the heart during heart transplant surgery. It remains unclear whether either was shipped to Georgia.
O’Neal said there is still a chance that more cases may emerge in Georgia, as a few patients of the Macon clinic showed symptoms of what may be the disease.
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