Antimicrobials News

Donald Kaye, MD, MACP, an influential infectious diseases clinician and researcher and longtime Infectious Disease News Editorial Board Member, died July 4 at the age of 88, his family announced.

The results of two studies published today in The New England Journal of Medicine that challenged WHO treatment recommendations for children with nonsevere pneumonia were “insufficient to change current clinical practice,” experts said.

Hospitalized patients who had a documented penicillin allergy had higher odds of receiving “inferior” antibiotics — some that could potentially cause adverse drug events, data published in JAMA Internal Medicine show.

Overall antimicrobial use in hospitals occurred at similar rates in 2011 and 2015, although differences were noted in certain patient or antimicrobial groups, according to findings published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The most recent MMWR included a report about a novel, emerging strain of beta-lactamase-producing Neisseria meningitidis in the United States that is resistant to both penicillin and ciprofloxacin.

Outpatient use of the antibiotic azithromycin was associated with greater 5-year risk for CV death, non-CV death and all-cause mortality compared with amoxicillin, researchers reported.

The prescribing of unnecessary antibiotics in U.S. physician offices and EDs decreased slightly, from 30% to 28%, between 2010 and 2015, according to findings published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Greater influenza vaccination uptake correlated with state-level reductions in antibiotic use, according to findings published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

Preliminary data showed that OpGen’s Unyvero HPN Panel for pneumonia was strongly concordant with bacterial culture in the detection of organisms causing coinfection.

Diagnoses of acute otitis media or suppurative middle ear infection relies chiefly on examination findings of the tympanic membrane. In 2013, the AAP revised its initial 2004 guidelines to include stringent diagnostic criteria and emphasized the need for accurate diagnosis of AOM and otitis media with effusion.