Keep it clean to prevent disease
Discarded skin cells provide a source of nutrients for infectious organisms
Much of what passes for medical research nowadays involves identifying previously unknown health hazards in our everyday lives. There is one area, however, where, despite intensive investigations, scientists have been unable to demonstrate such a threat – it is very difficult, verging on the impossible, to catch an infectious disease from an inanimate object. What, then, to make of the finding, reported in this paper, that half of airport security luggage trays harbour viruses implicated in causing flu and the common cold?
The study certainly prompted much comment, revealing some readers to be more than usually fastidious – popping a paper stall on the index finger prior to using a cash machine, discreetly cleansing the handle of supermarket trolleys with an antiseptic wipe, and deploying the knuckle rather than the hand to open doors.
It is probably no surprise to learn that scrutiny of the airport study provides no grounds for adopting such practices. The positive findings of viral contamination were restricted to two out of just four luggage trays (scarcely a representative sample), while the much larger number of sites tested elsewhere in the airport (32 in the lavatories, 20 from handrails) were all negative.
If physical contact with inanimate objects is not a source of contagion, the hands of others certainly can be – their discarded skin cells providing a ready source of nutrients for infectious organisms. But this is probably of little significance in everyday life, other than warranting the commonsensical habit of handwashing prior to preparing food.
It is a different matter in hospitals, though, with their nasty bugs and susceptible patients – demonstrated by the dramatic results of the “Clean Your Hands” campaign launched back in 2004, including the provision of alcohol hand rubs at the entrance to wards and at every bedside. The quantity of soap and alcohol purchased by hospitals increased threefold and, over the next few years, the number of cases of bloodstream infections with the MRSA “superbug” fell by almost three quarters (from 2,000 a year down to just over 500), and of the serious gut infection
Clostridium difficile by almost half. This ranks, alongside anti-smoking and seat-belt legislation, as one of the most successful of all public health interventions – so simple, so logical, it seems baffling, in retrospect, it was not introduced decades ago.
Night-time misery
This week’s query comes courtesy of Mr JY from Slough who, for some years now, has been woken almost every night by a short-lived but excruciating pain, from his foot to halfway up the shin bone. The following day, there is residual discomfort when walking, “as if I have been kicked hard”. He has consulted four specialists from various disciplines who have variously arranged for an MRI scan, a Doppler test to check out the blood flow to his legs, and two epidural injections in the lower lumbar spine – all, regrettably, to no avail. Might this syndrome, he wonders, be familiar to any readers of this column?
Cough medicine
Finally, confirmation of the benefit of drugs such as amitriptyline and gabapentin, usually prescribed for neuropathic pain, for those whose chronic cough is due to damage to the sensory nerves in the airways
– a condition known as cough hypersensitivity syndrome. After 20 years of ineffective medication with asthma inhalers, “it was suggested I try a low dose of gabapentin”, a woman writes. “I was entirely sceptical but the improvement was almost immediate” (see: Professor Kian Chung, “The neuropathic basis for cough hypersensitivity syndrome”, Journal of Thoracic
Disease, 2014 – available online).