A year after the fungal meningitis outbreak that killed 64 people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded a contract to the University of Alabama at Birmingham to investigate the long-term effects of the fungal infection on the more than 500 affected people.
UAB will run a study through August 2015 on the victims' health, effective treatments, treatment side effects and length and infection relapse.
CDC says the information will be useful in even of any future outbreaks, especially considering the fungal meningitis incident was the largest healthcare-associated infection outbreak to date, according to a news release.
The CDC also has two papers on the fungal meningitis outbreak in the Oct.24 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
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