Gastrointestinal Infections News

WHO announced today that it has partnered with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, Ministry of Health to provide more than 800,000 people with cholera immunizations. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, will fund the initiative, which will be implemented in North Kivu, in the eastern part of the DRC.

My path toward the field of infectious diseases was a bit winding. My love for immunology began at a young age. I was inspired to become an immunologist by my father, a rheumatologist and immunologist, whose license plate happens to be “T cell.” From the beginning, he made learning about the immune system fun and this still rings true with me today. At age 15, I spent my summer in the Cleveland Clinic microbiology lab with Dr. Belinda Yen-Lieberman. She taught me about virology, and I became fascinated with HIV. I always knew I wanted to be a rheumatologist but discovered that the intersection of infectious disease and rheumatology was the niche for me. With an immense amount of support from Carlos Isada, my ID program director, and Abby Abelson, my rheumatology program director, as well as from my father, I was fortunate to serve as the beta test subject of a 3-year combined fellowship in rheumatology and infectious disease, from which I graduated in 2018. Dr. Isada is the type of physician who is hard to come by these days — being a doctor is not “just a job” for him, but a life passion, and learning from him made it impossible to do anything but love the field of infectious diseases. Today I am lucky to practice medicine at the intersection of my two passions — seeing patients with infectious complications of immunosuppression, rheumatic manifestations of infections and HIV, and focusing on infection prevention and immunization. I am also lucky to get to work with my dad every day (and my sister, who also works in my department). I learn something new and have fun every day.

Researchers who planned a Fasciola treatment trial in 2017 with triclabendazole, or TCBZ, in the Bolivia Altiplano — a region previously known to have the highest prevalence and intensity of human fascioliasis— were not able to identify enough people with the condition.

An electronic medical record-based decision support matrix implemented as a stewardship intervention reduced the frequency of Clostridioides difficile testing and the number of patients potentially overtreated with antibiotics, and improved the fidelity of the tests, researchers reported.

RedHill Biopharma announced that it has submitted a new drug application to the FDA for Talicia to treat H. pylori infection.

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease have higher hospitalization rates for herpes zoster virus compared with other people without IBD, according to study results.

Prophylactic oral vancomycin does not consistently reduce the risk for Clostridioides difficile infection, or CDI, relapse in patients receiving systemic antibiotics during hospitalization, researchers found.

A recent study published in mBio suggested that treatment with albendazole for hookworms and roundworms did not have a harmful effect on patients’ gut microbiome composition.

VIENNA — In this exclusive video from the International Liver Congress 2019, Philippa Easterbrook, MD, senior scientist of the Global Hepatitis Program within the HIV Department at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, discusses a symposium focused on sharing “good practices and lessons learned” in the global viral hepatitis response.

ATLANTA — Nearly 300 survivors of the largest wildfire in California history were sickened in a norovirus outbreak that struck eight shelters set up to house evacuees, investigators reported.