This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Top stories from IDWeek 2016
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
NEW ORLEANS — Last week, more than 8,300 researchers, residents and medical students gathered in New Orleans at IDWeek 2016 to share their knowledge and experiences in the field of infectious disease. The annual conference — supported by the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the HIV Medicine Association and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society — featured the latest data on epidemiology, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases.
During a special opening plenary session, top experts addressed several major threats to global health, including antimicrobial resistance, HIV/AIDS and Zika, as well as the growing importance and potential of the human microbiome. Other key presentations at this year’s meeting included discussions on antimicrobial stewardship programs and national outbreak investigations, particularly of Mycobacterium chimaera among patients undergoing cardiac surgery, according to Daniel P. McQuillen, MD, FIDSA, Infectious Diseases Society of America chair of IDWeek and senior staff infectious disease physician at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center.
While looking back at meeting highlights, Infectious Disease News compiled a list of the most popular stories from IDWeek 2016:
Antibiotic-resistant pathogens often found on nurses’ scrubs
NEW ORLEANS — Findings from the ASCOT trial showed that antibiotic-resistant pathogens were frequently transmitted from patients in the ICU and their environments to nurses’ clothing.
The results emphasize the importance of infection control, but also indicate there is still much to learn about the spread of bacteria in hospitals, according to Deverick J. Anderson, MD, MPH, FIDSA, FSHEA, associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University Medical Center. Read more.
Project CLEAR: Serial decolonization reduces MRSA infection after hospital discharge
NEW ORLEANS — Results from a randomized controlled trial showed that decolonization with mupirocin and chlorhexidine reduced both MRSA and all-cause infection over a 1-year period in MRSA carriers who were recently discharged from a hospital.
“Patients who have MRSA who are discharged after hospitalization have a 24% risk of a serious infection in the next year after discharge, and 9% of them will develop serious MRSA disease,” Susan S. Huang, MD, MPH, professor of infectious disease and medical director of epidemiology and infection prevention at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, told Infectious Disease News. “We showed that a simple serial decolonization intervention over a period of 6 months reduced that risk of MRSA disease by 30% and a risk of all-cause infection by almost 20%.” Read more.
Fatal measles complication more common than previously understood
NEW ORLEANS — James D. Cherry, MD, MSc, reported that subacute sclerosing panencephalitis — a 100% fatal complication of measles — occurs much more often than previously thought. In a subanalysis of children who developed measles in the United States, the incidence of SSPE was one in 1,387 among those infected before age 5 years, and one in 609 among those infected before age 12 months.
“This is really alarming and shows that vaccination truly is life-saving,” Cherry said in a press release. “Measles is a disease that could be eliminated worldwide, but that means vaccinating at least 95% of all who are eligible with two doses of measles vaccine in order to protect everyone, including those who aren’t old enough to get the vaccine.” Read more.
Long-acting monoclonal antibody successful as rescue therapy for MDR HIV
NEW ORLEANS — TaiMed Biologics’ investigational monoclonal antibody ibalizumab led to significant reductions in viral load in patients with multidrug-resistant HIV when it was added to a failing drug regimen, according to results from a phase 3 trial. Researchers also said the drug, given intravenously once every 2 weeks, was safe and well-tolerated. Read more.
Researchers define ‘skip phenomenon’ in patients with S. aureus bacteremia
NEW ORLEANS — For older men treated for Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia who have received immunosuppressive agents, a single negative blood culture may be insufficient to demonstrate clearance.
Justin Fiala, MD, of the internal medicine department at the Mayo Clinic, described a period of fluctuating blood culture positivity in which there is a recurrence of S. aureus bacteremia infection following a negative blood culture, despite the patients receiving appropriate antibiotic therapy. This discrete finding, which he termed the “skip phenomenon,” had not previously been described in the literature, he said. Read more.