NBC News reports on its website that “two former officials of an Alabama compounding pharmacy have agreed to plead guilty to violating federal drug laws in preparing liquid nutrition tied to nine deaths, according to court documents filed Thursday.” David Allen and William Timothy Rogers, “of a now defunct compounding pharmacy called Meds IV, were charged with preparing a contaminated intravenous drug, Total Parenteral Nutrition, which was intended to be given to patients who could not receive their nutrition through eating.” Federal prosecutors said that “nine patients at Birmingham area hospitals developed bloodstream infections in 2011 after receiving the drug and died. ‘While a number of the patients who died had underlying conditions which may have contributed to their deaths, medical records of some patients suggest’ that the blood infections tied to the tainted drug ‘were also a significant factor,’ according to court documents.”
WBRC-TV Birmingham, AL reports that “according to authorities, the TPN was contaminated by a bacteria called Serratia marcescens because the pharmacists prepared and stored a compound of the drug in unsanitary ways.”
