Gastrointestinal Infections News

Norovirus has become the leading cause of medically attended acute gastroenteritis in countries with national rotavirus vaccination programs, including the United States, and is a common cause of outbreaks worldwide. There is still no licensed vaccine against norovirus, but there are promising candidates in the pipeline, experts said, and researchers are working to define which genotypes and populations to target.

BOSTON — The Hepatitis C Leaders in Primary Care program, or HELP-C, engaged primary care physicians to successfully screen and treat veterans with hepatitis C through comanagement with a specialist liver team, according to a study presented at The Liver Meeting 2019.

ATLANTA — Less than a quarter of patients in a national rheumatology registry were screened for hepatitis B or C prior to initiating biologics or a new synthetic DMARDs, despite their potential increased risk for viral hepatitis reactivation, according to data presented at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting.

A hard stop clinical decision support tool embedded in the electronic medical record significantly reduced repeat Clostridioides difficile toxin enzyme immunoassay, or T-EIA, testing at a hospital in St. Louis.

The FDA approved Talicia for the treatment of Helicobacter pylori infection in adults, manufacturer Redhill Biopharma announced.

NEW ORLEANS — Quality improvement projects focused on education and multidisciplinary cooperation have been successful at improving hepatitis B vaccination rates among neonates, according to a pair of studies presented at the AAP National Conference & Exhibition.

In June, the FDA issued a safety alert after two patients who had received investigational fecal microbiota transplants in two separate clinical trials developed invasive infections caused by drug-resistant Escherichia coli, and one died.

NEW ORLEANS — Children with acute gastroenteritis with dehydration receive unequal treatment in the ED because of race, according to a retrospective analysis of more than 30,000 patients.

The CDC launched a national campaign called Life is Better with Clean Hands to promote the importance of hand-washing among adults.

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.