Two people diagnosed HIV positive after receiving 'vampire facial' in New Mexico
At least two clients of a shuttered New Mexico day spa tested HIV positive, a state health official said, possibly from receiving a "vampire facial."
The two people were infected at VIP Spa in Albuquerque between May and September 2018, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.
The infections came via "injection related procedures," state regulators said in a statement. The health department did not elaborate.
But NBC affiliate KOB reported that the procedure in question is the so-called "vampire facial" — when blood is drawn from a client's body and then re-injected into his or her face.
State health officials fear there might be more people who could test positive for HIV, and hepatitis B and C.
So, slept with any mortals/vessels lately?
Previously: "Vampire Facial" Gone Wrong
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'Vampire Facial' Becomes Actual Horror As N.M. Spa Clients Face HIV Testing
The vampire facial was only supposed to sound scary. Sure, it involves extracting the patient's own blood, isolating the platelet-rich plasma by spinning it in a centrifuge and then re-injecting it into the face. But the results are touted to be rejuvenated, smooth and supple skin, not an HIV or hepatitis scare, as clients of the VIP Spa in Albuquerque, N.M., are now facing.
Health officials say those who received the vampire facial there — or any other type of injection-related service — at the spa between May and June 2018 were potentially put at risk of contracting a blood-borne disease. The New Mexico Department of Health is urging them to come for free HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C testing as well as free counseling.
The department was tipped off after a spa client "developed an infection that may have resulted from a procedure performed by the VIP Spa." Health and state regulatory officials performed an inspection and found problems with needle storage, handling and disposal. A health department spokesman told NPR while it is still early in the investigation, no other infections have been identified.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mykl on Thursday May 02 2019, @02:39AM (13 children)
The article doesn't really go into detail, but I'm assuming that the issue here is that they re-used needles when treating different clients.
How can that even be a thing in 2019? We've known about that risk for over 35 years - it's not exactly new!
I'd throw the book at them - ignorance absolutely cannot be an excuse on this one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @02:56AM
Or tubing or container or anything in contact with the blood
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @03:00AM (10 children)
Or they are just blaming this place for whatever reason?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @03:13AM
>"Additional laboratory testing on specimens from the two clients indicates recent infection with the same HIV virus- increasing the likelihood that the two HIV infections may have resulted from a procedure at the VIP spa. "
The "same virus"? I thought their excuse for no hiv vaccine was that it mutatred into millions of variants in each person.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday May 02 2019, @05:00AM (8 children)
The place was closed for being unlicensed and practicing unsafe handling of human blood for injection. Then, two customers with nothing else in common who are otherwise at low risk end up with the same strain of AIDS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @05:10AM (7 children)
Where do you see this low risk, nothing in common info? And how many different "strains" of HIV (not aids) are there? How common is this "strain"? And why only two people months apart out of the hundreds or whatever that must have been exposed?
Missing a lot of info here.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @07:06AM (5 children)
Not the GP. But to answer your question: if you count CRFs of HIV, there are over 100 known HIV-1 and HIV-2 subtypes out there. Of course, different strains are more common in different populations.
My guess as to what happened here, is that the clients tested positive for HIV and were added to the database. The epidemiologist went over the data about their strain and activity reports and linked the two. My guess is they reported getting the same procedure done on the same day at the same place, which would have caused them to get flagged due to potential needle reuse or other biosecurity/SOC violation at the facility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:45AM (4 children)
Well your guess is wrong since the exposure happened from May to Sept. And if these people were so "low risk" why did they get hiv tested to begin with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @02:56AM (3 children)
Out of curiosity, I looked at their preliminary epidemiological report. According to them, during an inspection of the VIP Spa, they found numerous biosecurity and standard-of-care violations that put people at high risk for contracting blood-borne pathogens, including HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C. Under New Mexico law, if a high risk facility fails so badly that they are forced to suspend operations they required to pay for testing for all patients, regardless of their assessed risk because this instantly makes every patient high risk.
Since testing was initiated, between 100 and 150 people have been tested. Numerous people had all sorts of blood-borne diseases, which for most diseases could have come from anywhere. However, subsequent investigation showed that the two patients had the same unidentified isolate of HIV. This is a dead giveaway that they probably got it from the same source and relatively recently, even if you don't know their other risk factors, because of HIV's well know distribution and virology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @11:50AM (2 children)
Wtf does this mean? Sounds like something a pseudoscientist would say. How common is this "strain" they are talking about?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @09:12PM (1 child)
Researchers have a good understanding of how HIV is distributed among world populations. For example, if someone has subtype K, then they are either in the Congo or Cameroon, or can have their exposure directly traced to those countries through the intermediate patients to the patient zero that brought it from there. See https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/sites/news/files/HIV.jpg [ucl.ac.uk] for a very rough picture. Now underneath each subtype, there are even more specific varieties of HIV, all the way down to single CRFs, which can literally be unique to an individual person. In addition, it is pretty well know how HIV mutates and strains undergo recombination, which aids in the determination of where and how long people got the virus. Finally, the vectors for infection are understood very well. Therefore, it is possible for the trained professionals to say where people most likely got them and to follow infections back to their source.
But your second question is literally impossible for anyone other than the state and CDC epidemiologists to answer because they haven't identified the isolate. It could literally occur in 3 people in the entire world, or be super-common in a place like China, or Australia, but have few known cases here, or be the primary B strain in Albuquerque.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @09:25PM
To clarify just a bit more, when I said "they haven't identified the isolate," I meant they haven't done so PUBLICLY. I'm sure they know exactly what virus they have down to the serotype, if not its genotype, but they haven't let the public know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:18AM
What a fucking idiotic question is that.
"stains" ??? HIV (not aids) ???
Dumb as a fucking post.
Confirmation! Dumber than a post. A post may actually read the fucking summary before posting dumb things.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday May 02 2019, @03:18PM
Or didn't properly decontaminate surfaces where the blooded equipment was after each patient procedure, or any other ways that the invasive surface could contact a contaminated instrument or surface.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Thursday May 02 2019, @04:11AM (5 children)
Yes, shoot your blood into your face because there isn’t any there. I can understand Dead Sea mud and salt, cucumbers on the eyes, and Botox. Hell, I’d put more faith in claims of people who rub semen on their faces for youthfulness than this shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @04:34AM (4 children)
They should have injected fetal fat tissue, which is the suppressed cure for diabetes and probably has a bunch of other beneficial effects. Turns out it produces some combination of hormones that makes insulin irrelevant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @04:40AM
Source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25898954 [nih.gov]
https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/156/7/2368/2422806 [oup.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday May 02 2019, @05:29AM (1 child)
Peter?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @02:10PM
Why do you think Democrats want all those immigrant abortions? They are harvesting the fetal brown adipose tissue...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:09AM
Or, they die of AIDs and bad non-medical advice. Trump voters, no?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Thursday May 02 2019, @06:26AM (3 children)
Yes, facials, of blood! OK, none of this appeals to any normal person, with the notable exception of Peter Thiel, so why is it on the front page of SoylentNews? Editores! We have a cred to uphold, an authoritiy as a reliable source of not bullshit news! And you give us this? And the White Supers submission? And the Vax sub that was actually an anti-vax sub? I am beginning to believe that our editors are not capable of detecting dog-whistle alt-right shit. There have been several examples of late, where the sub was pure right wing fascist propaganda, and the Eds fell for it, hook, line and sinker. We trust you, EDs, you are the soul of SoylentNews. Do not make me think that you are either stupid, or alt-right. It will make me submit more submissions, in either case. But do try to keep up appearances. And janrinok still has not responded to my challenge. He Must Know that he is wrong, a knave, and a poltroon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @09:16AM
Are you calling Peter Thiel "normal"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @06:58PM
Nah he thinks he is taking the high road by not engaging you. It is pretty sad they refuse to address the very obvious bias that goes on. Maybe one day they'll wake up, but so far the clueless racist postings by "totally not racists" is astounding.
You should actually be less antagonistic and over-the-top, it only gives them fuel for "muh persecution." Not that you shouldn't address their bullshit each and every time, but if you tone down the rhetoric you might get wider support.
Human politics, I hate it myself and try to live a good hermit life; but if you want to affect society you have to play those games at least somewhat.
Please don't rant about how my advice is bad and the knaves deserve all the harsh words, that isn't my point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @04:15PM
I'm with you on the white minority story, it doesn't matter at all, but the other two are useful. This one is entertaining, and the vaccine one is a good example of why herd immunity matters even in the absence of immunocompromised folk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @10:51PM (2 children)
The owner was a Muslim and two of the assistants were Muslims. Maybe this is a new form of jihad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @07:22PM (1 child)
Bayes' theorem states P(H|E)/P(¬H|E) = P(E|H)/P(E|¬H) * P(H)/P(¬H).
Here H is ``this is an islamic attack'', and E is ``(a) muslim(s) had the opportunity to do this''. Now we figure out the likelihood ratio of it being an islamic attack vs it being anything else in order to derive how strongly we should believe ``this is an islamic attack''.
P(E|H): this is the probability that (a) muslim(s) had the opportunity to do this in the hypothetical case where we know it was an islamic attack. If it was an islamic attack then it's pretty much certain that (a) muslim(s) had the opportunity to do it. Therefore P(E|H) ~= 1.
P(E|¬H): this is the probability that (a) muslim(s) had the opportunity to do this in the hypothetical case where we know it wasn't an islamic attack. According to [1] there were about 110,000 muslims in Mexico in 2011, and according to [2] there were 120,365,271 people total. If the number of muslims has risen since then (which pew expects), then this lowers the odds of this being an attack. If we assume muslims aren't over or under represented in healthcare (underrepresentation would increase the odds of H and vice versa) and that 10 people would have had the ability to cause this (cleaning staff could intentionally contaminate surfaces for example), then the odds of muslims being involved if it wasn't an islamic attack are roughly (110,000/120,365,271)*10 = 0.009 = 0.9%. Therefore P(E|¬H) ~= 0.009.
P(H): this is the probability that it is an islamic attack, _prior_ to observing that muslims had the opportunity. A good approximation of this would be the number of medical incidients which are islamic attacks. To calculate this prior we'll find the proportion of malpractice incidents which were islamic attacks. [3] says that the number of malpractice incidents in Mexico in 2001-3 was 14,968. [4] says there were 29 terrorist attacks in Mexico in 2014-16, "medical terrorism mexico" returns zero news stories on bing, and nothing on the first two pages of google. This gives us a probability of zero, but let's be generous to you and assume that there is one medical terrorism attack per three year period and all 29 terrorist attacks were islamic, this would put the proportion of malpractice incidents which are terror attacks at 1/14,968 = 0.000067 = 0.0067%. Therefore a very generous estimate of P(H) ~= 0.000067.
P(¬H): this is the probability that is isn't an islamic attack, this is just 1-P(H) = 1-0.000067 = 0.999933 = 99.99%. Therefore P(¬H) ~= 0.999933.
We can now compute the probability that this is an islamic attack after ovserving the evidence that muslims had opportunity per Bayes' theorem.
P(H|E)/P(¬H|E) = P(E|H)/P(E|¬H) * P(H)/P(¬H) = 1/0.009 * 0.000067/0.999933 = 111.111 * 0.000067 = 0.0074444.
P(H|E)/P(¬H|E) = 0.0074444.
Rearrange this a little.
P(H|E) = 0.007 * P(¬H|E)
P(¬H|E) = 134.329 * P(H|E)
Which means that, with the absurdly generous assumption that an islamic medical terror attack occurs every 3 years, it is 134 times more likely to be regular malpractice than a terror attack.
Your intuition that muslims having opportunity should increase your belief it was an islamic terror attack is correct, however you have overadjusted by a huge margin in light of this evidence.
This is overwhelmingly likely to be regular malpractice.
Doubtless people will pile on with troll mods and call you evil, but really you just have poor intuition for statistics. That's ok, humans suck at statistics without training, even professional statistisians have shitty intution compared to even the roughest back-of-the envelope calculations. If you want to know more, visit [5].
[1] https://www.pewforum.org/2011/01/27/future-of-the-global-muslim-population-regional-americas/ [pewforum.org]
[2] https://www.populationpyramid.net/mexico/2011/ [populationpyramid.net]
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1188117/ [nih.gov]
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Mexico#Prevalence [wikipedia.org]
[5] https://www.readthesequences.com/ [readthesequences.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @07:37PM
This assumption doesn't actually influence anything so doesn't matter. The point I intended to make by pointing out the 29 attacks was that if there were medical attacks among them, they'd be easy to find on google.