BU Student plays with bacteria, gets meningitis… at least it’s not ebola
Sophisticated genetic fingerprinting confirmed that a laboratory experiment was the source of a bacterial infection that sickened a graduate student on Boston University’s medical campus, city disease investigators said yesterday.
The genetic tests, conducted at the state laboratory in Jamaica Plain, compared a blood sample from the researcher with bacterial matter recovered from the lab where he was working on BU’s South End campus. “The bottom line,’’ said Dr. Anita Barry, top disease tracker at the Boston Public Health Commission, “is they matched.’’
The analysis erased any doubt about what caused the researcher to become sick last month and intensified investigations into precisely how he was exposed to a germ known as Neisseria meningitidis, which can cause meningitis.
The city’s biological lab safety division will review safety procedures in BU’s medical labs, to ensure that the school is doing everything possible to minimize researchers’ exposure to pathogens, Barry said. Investigators will examine what kind of protective gear the researcher was wearing, what kind of training he received, and how thoroughly he was supervised, Barry said.
The city strengthened its regulation of labs after three BU scientists became infected with tularemia in 2004, an episode that revealed sloppy lab practices and a failure to report those illnesses in a timely fashion.
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