The source of the Cryptosporidium is believed to be overflow from the Milwaukee area combined sanitary and storm sewer system into Lake Michigan, which was then taken into the Howard Avenue Water Purification Plant and distributed to an estimated 880,000 residents (of the 1.61 million residents in the Milwaukee area who receive their drinking water from Lake Michigan). These residents, who receive their drinking water from Lake Michigan, were told to boil their water before drinking it. More people were affected in this one outbreak than the combined number of people affected in every cryptosporidiosis outbreak in the 24 years since then. An estimated 69 people died during the outbreak, according to the CDC. The UKs biggest outbreak occurred in Torbay in Devon in 1995. In the summer of 1996, Cryptosporidium affected approximately 2,000 people in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada. Weeks later, a separate incident occurred in Kelowna, British Columbia, where 10,000 to 15,000 people got sick. 2001–2009
In April 2001, an outbreak occurred in the city of North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada. Between 5800 and 7100 people had diarrheal illness, and 1907 cases of cryptosporidiosis were confirmed. Equipment failures at the citys antiquated water filtration plant following maintenance were found to have caused the outbreak. In the summer of 2005, after numerous reports by patrons of gastrointestinal upset, a water park at Seneca Lake State Park, in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York was found to have two water storage tanks infected with Cryptosporidium.
According to Dr. John Leonard, PEP-C may have anti-angiogenetic properties, something that he and his colleagues are testing through an ongoing drug trial.Another approach involves using very high doses of chemotherapy, sometimes combined with total body irradiation (TBI), in an attempt to destroy all evidence of the disease. The downside to this is the destruction of the patients entire immune system as well, requiring rescue by transplantation of a new immune system (hematopoietic stem cell transplantation), using either autologous stem cell transplantation, or those from a matched donor (an allogeneic stem cell transplant). A presentation at the December 2007 American Society of Hematology (ASH) conference by Christian Geisler, chairman of the Nordic Lymphoma Group claimed that according to trial results, mantle cell lymphoma is potentially curable with very intensive chemo-immunotherapy followed by a stem cell transplant, when treated upon first presentation of the disease.These results seem to be confirmed by a large trial of the European Mantle Cell Lymphoma Network indicating that induction regimens containing monoclonal antibodies and high dose ARA-C (Cytarabine) followed by ASCT should become the new standard of care of MCL patients up to approximately 65 years.A study released in April 2013 showed that patients with previously untreated indolent lymphoma, bendamustine plus rituximab can be considered as a preferred first-line treatment approach to R-CHOP because of increased progression-free survival and fewer toxic effects. Immunotherapy
Immune-based therapy is dominated by the use of the rituximab monoclonal antibody, sold under the trade name Rituxan (or as Mabthera in Europe and Australia).