Beauty treatment kills Hong Kong woman, three ill

A 46-year-old woman has died in Hong Kong and three others are fighting for their lives following a beauty parlour treatment that involves blood transfusion, highlighting a lack of regulation in the city's cosmetic industry.

The cases have prompted an investigation by police and medical authorities, and renewed calls by health experts for tighter regulation of Hong Kong's beauty industry.

Yes, the woman aged 46 died (Wednesday morning) of septic shock, a government spokeswoman said. Three others, aged 56, 59 and 60, were in hospital with the eldest in critical condition.

Septic shock is normally caused by bacterial infection and can result in respiratory and organ failure, even death.

The four had recently undergone a complicated blood transfusion procedure at the DR beauty chain, according to government statements, in a treatment that was meant to boost their immune system and appearance.

The women paid around HK$50,000 ($6,400) for the procedure, which experts say is at best an experimental treatment for cancer patients and which has not shown to have any aesthetic application so far.

DR said in a statement on Wednesday that the procedures were carried out by a doctor who was not employed by the parlour.

The procedure required their blood to be taken to isolate and culture certain types of immune cells. These cytokine-induced killer cells were then injected back into the women together with their own blood plasma.

The four quickly fell ill with fever, dizziness and diarrhea. In an earlier blood sample taken from the woman who died, health officials found Mycobacterium abscessus, a superbug that is notoriously difficult to kill.

Although the direct cause of the woman's death has yet to be confirmed, experts say it is likely to have been bacterial infection.

They now have to find out where the bacterial contamination occurred in this whole process. Did it happen when the blood was drawn, during the culture process or when it was reinjected back into the body? said William Chui, president of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists in Hong Kong.

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