The deadly outbreak of meningitis that has left 30 ill and 5 dead has been traced to spinal steroid injections, given as an epidural. This announcement put my family on red alert because my husband has gotten spinal injections in the past, given in epidural form, as an outpatient.
What is the most shocking here is the description of what went wrong. According to the New York Times:
The outbreak, with 5 people dead and 30 ill in six states, is thought to have been caused by a steroid drug contaminated by a fungus. The steroid solution was not made by a major drug company, but was concocted by a pharmacy in Framingham, Mass., called the New England Compounding Center. Compounding pharmacies make their own drug products, which are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
On Monday, federal inspectors at the New England center found a sealed vial of the steroid afloat with so much foreign matter that it could be seen with the naked eye, Food and Drug Administration officials said Thursday. Under the microscope, the particles were a fungus.
