Camille Bains, The Canadian Press

A troubling rise in measles cases has a Toronto doctor remembering a little girl who became blind, noncommunicative and incontinent after contracting the virus.

Dr. Barry Goldlist was a medical student in 1973 when he saw the child, who was about 10, at the Hospital for Sick Children. She had developed subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE, a rare and fatal nervous system disease that typically strikes those who were infected with measles before their second birthday.

Some long COVID patients suffering symptoms including fatigue and shortness of breath are showing signs of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, suggests a Canadian study that builds on similar findings elsewhere. 

Manali Mukherjee, who led the study and is a respiratory researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, said two specific abnormal antibodies, or autoantibodies, which attack healthy tissues and are known to cause autoimmune disease, persisted in about 30 per cent of patients a year after they became infected.

A shortage of epidural tubes used to provide pain medication primarily during labour and delivery is affecting most provinces, but supply issues seem to be worse in Western Canada, says the vice-president of the Canadian Anesthesiologists' Society.

Dr. Lucie Filteau said "murmurings" of a shortage of the tubes, or catheters, began recently on a private online page of about 300 anesthesiologists across the country.