OT / Brazilian model who lost hands and feet dies

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - One month ago, 20-year-old beauty queen Mariana
Bridi was living the dream of many young Brazilian women, trading her
striking good looks for a modeling career that promised to lift her family
out of poverty.

Then she contracted a seemingly ordinary urinary tract infection. The
bacteria spread quickly and inexorably through her body, proving to be
extremely drug resistant. In a desperate bid to save her life, doctors
amputated her hands and feet. But by Saturday she was dead.

"God is comforting our hearts because he wanted her to be with him now," her
father Agnaldo Costa told reporters outside the hospital where his daughter
died. "I can't accept that my daughter left us so soon."

Bridi's Web site says she began modeling at age 14 with the hope of giving
"a dignified life to her parents."

Her father is a taxi driver and her mother a house cleaner.

By the age of 18, she was well on her way: In 2007 and 2008, she was a
finalist in the Brazilian stage of the Miss World pageant.

Her Web site said next month she was to participate in the second stage of a
modeling competition held in Sao Paulo by Dilson Stein, the Brazilian model
scout who discovered supermodel Gisele Bundchen.

Last year, she took fourth in the Face of the Universe competition in South
Africa and she had won bikini competitions across the globe.

The Miss World Brazil organization said she was an example of someone "who
knew how to intensely live her life."

Half a dozen memorial groups on Facebook had already sprung up just hours
after her death. On Bridi's own page on Orkut - the most popular Web social
networking site in Brazil - dozens of memorial messages were left.

The course of her illness was swift.

In late December, she fell ill and doctors in her native state of Espirito
Santo - northeast of Rio de Janeiro - initially diagnosed as having kidney
stones.

She returned to a hospital on Jan. 3 in septic shock - life-threatening low
blood pressure - from the infection that would force doctors to amputate
first her feet, then her hands. Doctors said there was little they could do
but pump drugs into her and hope for the best.

It was a nightmare scenario for anyone with an infection: Her body did not
react to the latest and most potent drugs while the bacteria in her veins
spread from head to toe.

In Bridi's case, the culprit was the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which
is known to be drug resistant.

According to the January 2008 book "Pseudomonas: Genomics and Molecular
Biology," edited by Pierre Cornelis, a researcher at the Flanders Institute
for Biotechnology in Brussels, the bacteria has the "worrisome
characteristic" of "low antibiotic susceptibility." It also easily mutates
to develop resistance to new drugs.

Death from infections caused by the bacteria are relatively rare, but not
unheard of: In late 2006, an outbreak of the bacteria at White Memorial
Medical Center in Los Angeles sickened five infants - leading to the deaths
of two of them.

The bacteria causes about 10 percent of the roughly two million
hospital-acquired infections each year in the U.S., according to health
officials.

A short statement from the Espirito Santo State Health Secretariat announced
her death on Saturday "despite all the commitment of the hospital team."

Her aunt said the hundreds of messages left on her Web site had lifted
Bridi's spirit in the past weeks.

"I believe that the serenity on her face came from this spiritual comfort,"
Oriendina Pereira Wasen said outside the hospital.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090125/ap_en_ce/lt_brazil_model_dies


.

Relevant Pages

  • recall of vioxx - antiinflammatories and bacterial disease
    ... Could Common anti-inflammatory drugs allow bacteria to take a deadly ... antiinflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen may have played a part. ... bacteria invade the bloodstream--for example, from the throat or a cut in the ... Stevens outlines the hypothesis that NSAIDs can mask an infection ...
    (sci.med.diseases.lyme)
  • Re: Mariana Bridi Dies: Miss World Finalist Succumbs After Amputations
    ... Miss World Finalist Succumbs After Amputations ... She returned to a hospital on Jan. 3 in septic shock _ life-threatening low blood pressure _ from the infection that would force doctors to amputate first her feet, ... It was a nightmare scenario for anyone with an infection: Her body did not react to the latest and most potent drugs while the bacteria in her veins spread from head to toe. ...
    (misc.health.alternative)
  • Re: Major Confrontation Brewing Between Big Pharma and Natural Health Movement
    ... >>Most antibiotics are given for bacteriostatic levels and do not kill ... >>bacteria but leave it to the bodies owns defenses. ... >>do not touch the susceptibility of the person to infection. ... >>Modern medicine agrees with you which is why a lot of drugs kill people ...
    (sci.med.nutrition)
  • Re: Major Confrontation Brewing Between Big Pharma and Natural Health Movement
    ... >>Most antibiotics are given for bacteriostatic levels and do not kill ... >>bacteria but leave it to the bodies owns defenses. ... >>do not touch the susceptibility of the person to infection. ... >>Modern medicine agrees with you which is why a lot of drugs kill people ...
    (sci.med)
  • Fags with AIDS: Brazil to break Aids drug patent
    ... Brazil to break Aids drug patent ... The country will import a cheaper, ... The decision came after talks between Brazil and the US company broke down. ... Brazil's decision means that Merck, which holds the patent for the drugs, ...
    (alt.politics)
Loading