West Texas doctors are seeing measles patients whose illness is complicated by alternative therapy approved by vaccine skeptics, including health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Parents in Gaines County, Texas, are at the heart of the outbreak of turbulent measles, many of which have become increasingly repurposed and unproven treatments to protect children who have not been vaccinated against the virus.
One of those supplements is Vitamin A, which Kennedy advertises as a miraculous treatment for measles. Doctors at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, say they have treated a small number of children who were given so much vitamin A, which has signs of liver damage.
Dr. Summer Davis, who cares for children with acute illnesses at the hospital, said some of them had been receiving unsafe supplements for weeks to prevent measles infection.
“We were sick for just a few days, five days, five days, and five days, but we had been taking it for about three weeks,” Dr. Davis said.
Doctors may manage severe measles by administering high doses of vitamin A in hospitals, but experts do not recommend taking it without supervision from a doctor. Vitamin A is not an effective way to prevent measles. However, two doses of measles, mumps and rubella vaccines are about 97% effective.
At high doses, vitamin A can cause liver damage. Dry skin peeled skin. Hair loss; and in rare cases, seizures and com sleep. So far, doctors at a hospital in West Texas have said they have seen patients with high yellow skin and liver enzymes in both blood tests for both liver signs.
Many of these patients were in hospital due to severe measles infection. The doctor only discovered liver damage after regular lab work.
As of Tuesday, the outbreak that began in January had spread to more than 320 cases in Texas. Forty patients were hospitalized and one child died.
Nearby New Mexico County, the virus has suffered 43 illnesses and two hospitalised. Seven confirmed cases in Oklahoma are also linked to outbreaks.
Local doctors and health officials are increasingly concerned about the growing popularity of unproven treatments to prevent and treat measles. They fear that people will delay serious treatment and refuse vaccination, the only proven way to prevent measles infection.
Alternative medicine has always been popular in Gaines County. Many of the large Mennonite communities in areas where most cases are clustered are avoiding interaction with the healthcare system and adhere to a long tradition of natural therapy.
Health officials said the popularity of Vitamin A’s recent use of measles could go back to a Fox News interview with Kennedy.
in Opinion essay In the Washington Post Tuesday afternoon, Kevin Griffith, who was the communications director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until last week, wrote that he had resigned to handle Kennedy’s outbreak.
“In my last few weeks at the CDC, I saw a career infectious disease expert being tasked with spending valuable time wasting data searches to support Kennedy’s preferred treatment,” writes Griffith.
A few weeks after the interview with Fox News, Drugstore In West Texas, I had a hard time maintaining vitamin A and cod liver oil supplements on my shelf. “I didn’t hear anything about Vitamin A until he said that on TV,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health at Lubbock.
One local doctor, appointed as one of the doctors that Kennedy said in an interview with Fox News, opened a makeshift clinic in Gaines County, and began eliminating a variety of treatments, including vitamin A supplements, to treat active incorrect cases and prevent infection.
Dr. Davis said he suspected that the majority of the children she treated had taken vitamins at home.
Experts say Vitamin A can play an important role in the “advocacy care” provided by doctors to patients with severe measles infection.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, works by replenishing physical reservoirs that have been depleted by viruses that strengthen the immune system.
In hospitals, doctors only give measles children two vitamins, usually over two days, and “adjusting very carefully” the amount according to their age and weight, he said.
Dr. Schaffner emphasized that it is not a miraculous treatment of the virus, and that measles does not have antiviral drugs. Also, there is no reliable evidence that vitamin A can help prevent infection in children in the US, with extremely rare vitamin A defects.
In fact, giving children high doses of repeated vitamins is dangerous. Unlike other vitamins that are washed away from the body via urine, excess vitamin A accumulates in adipose tissue and is more likely to reach dangerous levels over time.
“I think this type of preventative use is particularly concerning,” said Dr. Lara Johnson, another doctor at Lubbock Hospital.
“When you’ve been taking it on your kids for weeks or weeks, you can have a cumulative toxicity impact.,” she added.
Dr. Johnson added that local doctors don’t always accurately reflect the amount of vitamins the label contains and are particularly concerned about parents’ dependence on over-the-counter supplements that can accept dosage recommendations from unverified sources.
Source: www.nytimes.com
