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"Pennsylvania has its first confirmed case of fungal meningitis linked to the national outbreak.The state Health Department said it's a patient who received a steroid injection in July at Allegheny Pain Management in the Altoona area.It is one of two facilities in the state that received steroids from the New England company that made the tainted drugs.The Pennsylvania case brings the total number of confirmed cases of fungal meningitis to 206 across 15 states and 15 confirmed deaths reported so far.Pennsylvania health officials said they expect to find more cases in the coming days.\"It's a huge concern,\" said acting Pennsylvania Physician General Stephen Ostroff.Ostroff said state health officials have been in touch with hundreds of Pennsylvania residents who are known to have received the steroid injections that came from the Massachusetts specialty pharmacy linked to the fungal meningitis outbreak.\"We have been telling all the people who have received one of these injections at those two clinics to watch out for any change in their health status,\" Ostroff said.The state Health Department learned that 380 injections were sent to the two Pennsylvania clinics, of which about 300 were administered before the product was recalled.Health officials said they are contacting 600 individuals with ties to the clinics and expect to see more cases before long.\"All the patients that received these medications around the country are still being contacted and sometimes it may be as long as two months for symptoms to show,\" Ostroff said.There are treatments individuals can receive once the disease is diagnosed, but even then it's not clear how long patients will have to undergo those treatments.The Food and Drug Administration has broadened the warning about other medicines made by the New England company linked to the outbreak.The FDA wants health care professionals to contact patients who received any injection made by the company to warn them of the risk of infection.Health officials said fungal meningitis is not contagious.Click here for a map of where\u00A0fungal meningitis cases have been reported."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.wgal.com/article/fungal-meningitis-found-in-pa/6222836>