Category Ranking

98%

Total Visits

921

Avg Visit Duration

2 minutes

Citations

20

Article Abstract

Background: In 2023, we experienced an outbreak from a case of undiagnosed crusted scabies, resulting in a significant number of exposed individuals and secondary cases. In this report, we describe the outbreak control measures, the attack rate, and the risk factors for acquisition of scabies among healthcare workers (HCWs).

Methods: This study was conducted in a 2,700-bed tertiary care hospital in Seoul, South Korea. The attack rate was defined both for microscopic proven cases per exposed individuals and as the sum of proven and probable cases per exposed individuals. Outbreak control measures included identifying and treating all potentially exposed individuals with or without symptoms, as well as environmental disinfection.

Results: From the index, there was potential quinary transmission resulting in 63 proven cases, 142 probable cases, and a total of 1,820 exposed individuals, including 734 contacts from the index case. The attack rate from the index was 7% (50/734) based on proven cases and 19% (138/734) based on proven and probable cases. Among the 526 HCWs who received preemptive topical treatment with permethrin applied once, 21 (4%) were later diagnosed as scabies. In addition, 5 of 20 HCWs (25%) with initial proven scabies had a persistent positive microscopic exam after four permethrin treatments. In the case group, there were significantly more nurses (60% vs. 43%, = 0.007) and nurse assistants (20% vs. 9%, = 0.006). There were significantly more cases than controls involving direct contact with the index case (94% vs. 64%, < 0.001).

Conclusion: Lowering the threshold for suspicion of crusted scabies is important, as a single missed case could lead to a large outbreak. Simultaneously applying preemptive permethrin cream to all potentially exposed individuals might have been effective in preventing further transmission. However, caution is needed because the development of scabies or persistent scabies is possible even with preemptive or therapeutic treatment.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11745925PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2025.40.e7DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

exposed individuals
24
crusted scabies
12
attack rate
12
proven cases
12
probable cases
12
scabies
8
tertiary care
8
care hospital
8
cases
8
outbreak control
8

Similar Publications

Concomitant Comedications and Survival With First-Line Pembrolizumab in Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer.

JAMA Netw Open

September 2025

Oncostat U1018, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Ligue Contre le Cancer, Paris-Saclay University, Villejuif, France.

Importance: Antibiotics, steroids, and proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are suspected to decrease the efficacy of immunotherapy.

Objective: To explore the association of comedications with overall survival (OS) in patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Design, Setting, And Participants: This nationwide retrospective cohort study used target trial emulations of patients newly diagnosed with NSCLC from January 2015 to December 2022, identified from the French national health care database.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Higher intellectual abilities have been associated with lower mortality risk in several longitudinal cohort studies. However, these studies did not fully account for early life contextual factors or test whether the beneficial associations between higher neurocognitive functioning and mortality extend to children exposed to early adversity.

Objective: To explore how the associations of child neurocognition with mortality changed according to the patterns of adversity children experienced.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The human auditory system must distinguish relevant sounds from noise. Severe hearing loss can be treated with cochlear implants (CIs), but how the brain adapts to electrical hearing remains unclear. This study examined adaptation to unilateral CI use in the first and seventh months after CI activation using speech comprehension measures and electroencephalography recordings, both during passive listening and an active spatial listening task.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Exposure to traumatic events is common amongst children from refugee backgrounds. Given the restricted access of refugee children to formal specialist resources and disrupted parental support mechanisms in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), teachers are increasingly expected to be the primary responders to the complex psychosocial needs of trauma-exposed refugee children. However, despite LMICs hosting over two-thirds of the world's refugee children, our current knowledge of how teachers respond to these needs is predominantly drawn from studies conducted in well-resourced, high-income countries, which fails to capture the unique experiences of teachers in inadequately resourced schools in LMICs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Generalized Functional Linear Models: Efficient Modeling for High-dimensional Correlated Mixture Exposures.

Biomed Environ Sci

August 2025

Precision Key Laboratory of Public Health, School of Public Health, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan 523808, Guangdong, China;Maternal and Child Research Institute, Shunde Women and Children's Hospital, Guangdong Medical University, Foshan 528300, Guangdong, China.

Objective: Humans are exposed to complex mixtures of environmental chemicals and other factors that can affect their health. Analysis of these mixture exposures presents several key challenges for environmental epidemiology and risk assessment, including high dimensionality, correlated exposure, and subtle individual effects.

Methods: We proposed a novel statistical approach, the generalized functional linear model (GFLM), to analyze the health effects of exposure mixtures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF