Dermatology News

The diagnosis of Mycobacterium marinum infection can be delayed by a number of factors, including poor documentation of water exposure, atypical clinical presentation and empiric antibiotic treatment prior to a definitive diagnosis, according to a recent study.

In 2018, infections were the cause of 13% of all new cancer diagnoses, totaling 2.2 million new cases worldwide, although these totals do not include nonmelanoma skin cancers, according to findings published in The Lancet Global Health.

To mark the transition to a new year, we have compiled a list of the top 10 most-read Infectious Disease News stories of 2019 on Healio.com. Please click the links to read the full stories.

I was the intern on call for the pediatric oncology service at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital when my mother called with news that my father had experienced a stroke. My colleagues covered the service while my wife and I drove quickly to my hometown a few hours away. My dad had, indeed, experienced a large middle cerebral artery stroke, but curiously he was also highly febrile (40.5C). In the hours and days to follow, we would learn that he had a large mitral valve vegetation, that he had group B Streptococcus bacteremia and that he would not survive the event.

NEW YORK — Infectious Diseases in Children Editorial Board Member Lawrence F. Eichenfield, MD, chief of pediatric and adolescent dermatology at Rady Children’s Hospital and vice chair of the department of dermatology at the University of California, San Diego, presented a live version of “Spot the Rash” at the Infectious Diseases in Children Symposium.

I fell in love with immunology as a first-year medical student at Harvard in a class taught by the Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Baruj Benacerraf. It was the mid-1980s, and the HIV epidemic was emerging in all its perplexing horror, the virus devastating the immune system through unknown means. I had friends who were stigmatized and dying from HIV, which made it personal. When I was a third-year medical student in 1987, Chip Schooley was my ID attending. He was involved in clinical trials to treat HIV as well as laboratory research to understand HIV immunology. His brilliance and passion for patient care and research were inspiring, and that is when I became hooked on ID! I decided then that I would dedicate my career to fighting the HIV epidemic through clinical care and research to unravel how HIV evades and depletes the immune system. I was fortunate that Chip recruited me to perform my ID fellowship at the University of Colorado and then to join the faculty. Although there were many challenges, the path has been fulfilling. I would encourage anyone who wishes to pursue an academic career in ID to focus on what they think is important and find good mentors!

Much of published antimicrobial stewardship literature has focused on reducing the use of broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy. However, in addition to the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, prolonged antimicrobial use is also associated with the development of antimicrobial resistance. Durations of therapy often are determined upon discharge, and this transition period has not been a focus of many antimicrobial stewardship interventions.

Following a “dramatic” rise in skin and soft tissue infections, or SSTIs, in the United States that peaked earlier this decade, evidence shows an overall plateau in more recent years and a decline among children, although the burden remains substantial, researchers reported.

I did my internal medicine residency at Yale New Haven Hospital in the years immediately before the advent of protease inhibitors would change the face of ART. In addition to caring for many young gay men with AIDS, I saw the side of the epidemic that even today remains relatively hidden in the United States, and is operative throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa: young women — often black — who presented late in the disease, having been infected by boyfriends or husbands. I was on call when one of my favorite patients, Shirley B., was admitted to die, and the team paged me to let me know so I could see her. I’ll never forget their kindness in doing that and my visit to her room. These experiences solidified not only my interest in ID but in advancing women’s reproductive health and autonomy related to ID and HIV prevention. Vaginal health? Female-controlled prevention methods? These were not sexy concepts that attracted big names during my subsequent training and early research career. Luckily, through persistence and commitment and probably some measure of stubborn cluelessness, I connected with some brave visionary mentors who believed there was a future in this arena and who themselves had battled for sexual and reproductive health — women, LGBT people, others not always at the proverbial table when funding or policy priorities are set. The rest is my personal history, and I know that only in ID would I have been able to accomplish any of it.

Curtis J. Donskey, MD, and colleagues at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center had a novel idea to prevent some infections in their facility.