My Blog - Judy Wong

Toxic Shock Syndrome due to super-absorbent Tampons:

Toxic shock syndrome is a rare, life-threatening bacterial infection that has been most often associated with the use of superabsorbent tampons and occasionally with the use of contraceptive sponges.

In 1980, an outbreak of toxic shock syndrome occurred that mostly involved young women who had been using a particular brand of superabsorbent tampons. The cause of the outbreak seemed to be toxins produced by Staphylococcus aureus (staph) bacteria.
While the infection often occurs in menstruating women, it can also affect men, children and postmenopausal women. Other risk factors for toxic shock syndrome include skin wounds and surgery.

Signs and symptoms of toxic shock syndrome develop suddenly, and the disease can be fatal. You can reduce your chances of getting toxic shock syndrome by changing your tampon frequently.

Sounds scary, eh? It’s one of the weird words in “Environment and communication diseases” under the course “Sustainable Development in the 21th Century”, which they invite external speakers once a twilight with free refreshment (for the reason that I applied the course :P)

Anyway, it was more to that. Legionnaire’s disease.  Peptic ulcer is caused by bateria instead of the conventionally thought stress. Antibiotics-resistant bacteria first identified in Hong Kong. In the transportation of the first AIDs victim in HK 1985, the medics dressed up more protective that those in the movie “outbreak”. My new insight to the medical development, eh.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 28th, 2005 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.