Mass Gatherings and Diarrheal Disease Transmission Among Rural Communities in Coastal Ecuador.

Mass gatherings exacerbate infectious disease risks by creating crowded, high-contact conditions and straining the capacity of local infrastructure. While mass gatherings have been extensively studied in the context of epidemic disease transmission, the role of gatherings in incidence of high-burden, endemic infections has not been previously studied. Here, we examine diarrheal incidence among 17 communities in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, in relation to recurrent gatherings characterized using ethnographic data collected during and after the epidemiologic surveillance period (2004-2007).

Acute Flaccid Myelitis of Unknown Etiology in California, 2012-2015.

Importance: There has been limited surveillance for acute flaccid paralysis in North America since the regional eradication of poliovirus. In 2012, the California Department of Public Health received several reports of acute flaccid paralysis cases of unknown etiology.

Objective: To quantify disease incidence and identify potential etiologies of acute flaccid paralysis cases with evidence of spinal motor neuron injury.

Pregnancy and severe influenza infection in the 2013-2014 influenza season.

Objective: To describe the epidemiologic and clinical characteristics of critically ill pregnant and postpartum women with influenza infection reported in the 2013-2014 season.

Methods: The California Department of Public Health conducts surveillance for patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza who die or require hospitalization in intensive care units. For this case series, we reviewed data on pregnant and postpartum (6 weeks or less from delivery) women reported in the 2013-2014 influenza season.

Influenza-associated intensive-care unit admissions and deaths - California, September 29, 2013-January 18, 2014.

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) conducts surveillance on severe influenza illness among California residents aged <65 years. Severe cases are defined as those resulting in admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) or death; reporting of ICU cases is voluntary, and reporting of fatal cases is mandatory. This report describes the epidemiologic, laboratory, and clinical characteristics of ICU and fatal influenza cases with symptom onset on or after September 29, 2013, and reported by January 18, 2014 of the 2013-14 influenza season.

Contact hypersensitivity to oxazolone provokes vulvar mechanical hyperalgesia in mice.

The interplay among pain, allergy and dysregulated inflammation promises to yield significant conceptual advances in immunology and chronic pain. Hapten-mediated contact hypersensitivity reactions are used to model skin allergies in rodents but have not been utilized to study associated changes in pain perception in the affected skin. Here we characterized changes in mechanical hyperalgesia in oxazolone-sensitized female mice challenged with single and repeated labiar skin exposure to oxazolone.