Meningitis cases up to 198, deaths to 15

The number of people infected with meningitis continued to rise Saturday when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that 15 people have died in 198 cases of the disease.

The latest victim died in Indiana, a state which had already been listed as affected by the controversy.

People have died in six states: six in Tennessee, three in Michigan, two each in Florida and Indiana and one each in Maryland and Virginia.

Other states involved include Idaho, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey and Ohio.

The new figures were released a day after news broke that a class-action lawsuit was filed in Minnesota against the company identified as the source of a spinal steroid that has caused the disease.

Officials have tied the outbreak of rare fungal meningitis to tainted steroid shots for back pain that were custom-made by New England Compounding Center, a specialty pharmacy in Framingham, Mass. The steroid was recalled Sept. 26.

The government has identified about 75 facilities in 23 states that received the recalled doses. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 14,000 patients were treated with three recalled lots of the drug.

Clinicians should contact patients who received potentially contaminated injections, the CDC has said. Once identified, patients with infections should be put on appropriate anti-fungal therapy.

Meningitis is an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. Infected patients have developed a variety of symptoms, which set in about one to four weeks after their injections. These include fever, a new or worsening headache, nausea and problems similar to those seen in a stroke.