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(Medical-NewsWire.com, November 18, 2012 ) San Francisco, CA -- The steroids responsible for the deaths of 31 people became more dangerous the longer they sat on the shelf, said health officials in Tennessee.
Of the nearly 150 Tennessee patients exposed to potentially contaminated steroid injections, those who received doses more than 50 days old were more five times more likely to develop meningitis than those whose medicine came from vials less than 50 days old, they said, noting that the rate of infection for those receiving the older medicine was 19% higher than the 3% rate for those who received fresher medication.
"The longer something sits, the longer that culture medium has to grow and nurture a really lethal batch of the infectious agent," said Albert Wu, director of the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The steroid, which was produced by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass., has been blamed for a nationwide outbreak of fungal meningitis that killed 31 people and made 424 people sick. The drug had been administered as a pain reliever for those suffering from spine and joint pain.
Experts say normally drugs from a compounding pharmacy would not have gone unused for 50 days.
Another problem with that particular batch of steroids was that it was not sterile as it should have been. Although the company said it had performed sterility tests on the drugs, the Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy said the testing was not sufficient.
It turned out that the drug was contaminated with fungus.
If the drug had been sterile, it would not have mattered how long it sat on the shelf prior to use, said Timothy Jones, Tennessee state epidemiologist. "If there's nothing in there, then there's nothing to grow."
Doctors who administered the drug were simply caught in the middle, said Jones. "There's just nothing they could have done. Really, it honestly was not anything they could have known."
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