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Fusarium and Acanthamoeba keratitis: can a single centre detect outbreaks?
  1. W Sansanayudh1,
  2. V Cevallos1,
  3. T C Porco1,2,
  4. T P Margolis1,3,
  5. T M Lietman1,2,3,4,
  6. N R Acharya1,3
  1. 1
    University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
  2. 2
    Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
  3. 3
    Department of Ophthalmology, University of California, San Francisco, 8 Koret Way, San Francisco, CA, USA
  4. 4
    Institute for Global Health, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
  1. N R Acharya, 513 Parnassus Ave, Room S334, San Francisco, CA 94143-0412, USA; nisha.acharya{at}ucsf.edu

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjo.2007.134171

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    The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently reported nationwide epidemics of Fusarium and Acanthamoeba keratitis.1 2 These investigations were prompted by reports of increased cases at individual sites.3–5 It can be difficult to detect outbreaks at a single centre due to changing diagnostic criteria, changing referral patterns, and the effects of chance. The objective of the current study was to determine if the recent outbreaks of Fusarium or Acanthamoeba keratitis could be identified from data obtained from a single centre, the F I Proctor Foundation at the University of California, San Francisco. Using the Maximum Excess Events Test (MEET), which detects clustering within years and between years, we confirmed epidemics consistent with the recently reported epidemics of Fusarium and Acanthamoeba keratitis. Our study shows that it is possible …

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    Footnotes

    • Funding: TML is supported by National Eye Institute grants U10-EY015114 and a Research to Prevent Blindness award, and NRA by a K23EY017897 and a Research to Prevent Blindness Career Development Award. The sponsors had no role in the design or conduct of the study, data analysis or manuscript preparation.

    • Competing interests: None.

    • Ethics approval: Approval for this study was obtained from the Committee on Human Research at the University of California, San Francisco.