Antimicrobials News

Oral ribaxamase reduces the incidence of Clostridioides difficile infection, or CDI, compared with placebo in patients treated with IV ceftriaxone for lower respiratory tract infections, according to results from a phase 2b trial.

Antibiotic prophylaxis for miscarriage surgery did not significantly lower the risk for pelvic infection during a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial conducted in four low- or middle-income countries, according to findings published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

United States health care providers decreased their prescribing of oral antibiotics, including broad-spectrum antibiotics, between 2011 and 2016, according to findings published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. However, increases in prescriptions were observed among certain specialists and patients.

Adults receiving short-course therapy for the treatment of uncomplicated Pseudomonas aeruginosa bloodstream infections, or BSIs, experienced similar outcomes compared with those receiving prolonged-course therapy, according to findings from a multicenter, observational, propensity-score weighted cohort study.

Patients with cardiovascular implantable electronic device pocket infections who meet criteria for systemic inflammatory response syndrome or are hypotensive at admission — or both — are more likely to have underlying bloodstream infections and should immediately be started on empiric antibiotics after blood cultures are obtained, researchers suggested.

NEW ORLEANS — In long-term follow-up of patients with left-sided endocarditis, those who were switched from IV antibiotics to oral antibiotics after stabilization had better rates of survival and other outcomes, according to new data from the POET trial.

WHO fully released new treatment guidelines for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR-TB, and announced a package of actions it said is designed to help countries close gaps in care.

The New Jersey state legislature voted unanimously to approve a bill that would name Streptomyces griseus as the official state microbe, and the legislation has been sent to Gov. Phil Murphy for consideration.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America has issued updated clinical practice guidelines for the management of asymptomatic bacteriuria, or ASB.

“Typhus is not dead. It will live on for centuries and it will continue to break into the open whenever human stupidity and brutality give it a chance, as most likely they occasionally will.” – Hans Zinsser. The lure of infectious disease began with books (science fiction, noir detectives, Arrowsmith), but the hook was sex and drugs. While debating a life in philosophy or neuroscience (but for the slaughter of mice), I stumbled into volunteering at the Berkeley Free Clinic. Mentored by charismatics at the radical front of free health care and harm reduction with dignity, these teachers had weathered the Vietnam War, AIDS crisis and multiple injection-drug epidemics. To keep up and care for clients, I had to understand not only chlamydia, abscesses and hepatitis C, but also feminism, gay liberation, sex work, homelessness and criminal justice. The infections were a window into the vulnerabilities of our social immune system. At the University of California, San Francisco, my ID teachers varied widely in appearance and constitution, as well as where they would return after rounds: the laboratories, the clinics, phone meetings with WHO, the city’s public health department and the one attending who would stop by the freeway underpass to sit with one of her struggling patients. ID was the hopeful work of hopelessly tangled systems: global commerce and immunoglobulins; gender, power and negotiating condoms; heroin, the hospital venting systems and where the water flows. My ID mentors and colleagues continue to inspire and surprise me with endless curiosity, rigorous intellectual integrity and ferocious passion for doing the right thing. Typhus is not dead, nor are MRSA, HIV, or human brutality. I am grateful to be an ID physician who can draw on a rich history and community to push against these with vigor and compassion, immersed in the ambitious life’s work of sex, drugs and microbes.