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Valley Fever Costs Mount for Patients and Taxpayers

September 20, 2012
With valley fever cases soaring in the southwest, people’s lives and finances are being upended. Misdiagnosis of the disease adds to the costs for doctor’s visits, hospitalizations and long-term treatment with drugs. At more than $100,000 for a typical hospital stay, valley fever, on...

Valley Fever Cases Soar, Harm Remains Hidden

September 10, 2012
Valley fever starts with the simple act of breathing. Fungal spores, lifted from the dry dirt by the wind, pass through your nostrils or down your throat, so tiny they don’t even trigger a cough. They lodge in your lungs. If you’re fortunate – and most people are – they go...

Valley Fever cases way up

September 7, 2012
PHOENIX -- Among the unique aspects of life in the Valley of the Sun is the likelihood of contracting a disease you won't find almost anywhere else. Eighty percent of Arizona's reported cases of Valley Fever occur in Maricopa County, according to Dr. John Galgiani at the newly opened Valley...

Update: Health Officials Peg Tracy as Valley Fever Hotspot

June 15, 2012
Reported cases of valley fever by Tracy residents have risen more than 500 percent during the past three years, according to public health officials. The highest level of the fungus in San Joaquin County can be predominately found around Tracy, said Dr. Karen Furst, health officer for the San...

Living with Valley Fever

August 3, 2007
"Hindsight is 20/20." Millions of people understand the reality of that saying as they learn they've lived with valley fever for weeks, months or even years before proper diagnosis. More are learning to live with it every day, because valley fever is at epidemic levels across the...

Q & A Library: What's the Best Treatment for Valley Fever?

January 7, 2002
Q. What's the best treatment for valley fever? A. Valley fever is an infection - usually of the lungs - caused by a fungus, Coccidioides immitis, found in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. It was discovered in the San Joaquin Valley of California and is also...

The Fungus Among Us

February 11, 1996
They will probably never make the bestseller list, nor star in films featuring Dustin Hoffman, Bruce Willis or monkeys. Nonetheless, fungi -- the kingdom of organisms that includes molds and yeast -- have been quietly positioning themselves as the newest threat to human health, and epidemiologists...

Secret Life of the Fungus: Yes, It Does Have Sex

February 6, 1996
How can you tell if a fungus is having sex? Until now, the answer to this rather arcane scientific riddle has been: not very easily. Now a team of researchers, borrowing techniques from diverse fields to study the fungus that each year gives thousands of people valley fever, say they have found...

Fever Sickens Dozens Near Earthquake Epicenter

February 24, 1994
To the woes of the victims of the Northridge earthquake, add pestilence. In the month since the Jan. 17 quake shook the San Fernando Valley and much of the rest of the Los Angeles area, at least three dozen people in this part of California have become ill from what doctors say is an unusual...

California Fights a Curious Regional Disease

November 27, 1981
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — In December 1977, a sudden wind erupted in the parched San Joaquin Valley of central California and, in one of the rare fireworks of nature that families speak about for generations, it whipped up clouds of dust that rolled like enormous opaque waves for hundreds of...

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