Respiratory Infections News

The first case of a new coronavirus at the center of an ongoing outbreak in Wuhan, China, has been identified in the United States.

WHO has called an emergency committee meeting to determine if the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in China should be considered a global public health emergency.

In an HIV-positive population, the Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra assay detected tuberculous meningitis with higher sensitivity than the older Xpert assay and a mycobacterial growth indicator tube culture, according to findings published in The Lancet.

WHO published a list of 10 global health challenges for the next decade that it said “reflects a deep concern that leaders are failing to invest enough resources in core health priorities and systems.”

A patient in Thailand is being treated for a novel coronavirus that has been linked to an outbreak of pneumonia in China, according to WHO. Thai officials have identified the patient as a traveler from Wuhan, China, where the outbreak is taking place.

Chinese health authorities have reported the emergence of an unidentified strain of pneumonia that has infected dozens of people since the middle of December.

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.

The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, awarded Paratek Pharmaceuticals a contract worth up to $285 million to develop and test omadacycline — marketed as Nuzyra — for the treatment of pulmonary anthrax, the company announced.

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.

In the current era of medicine, the creation of practice guidelines and the care we provide to our patients are based on a combination of data gathered from 1) well-conducted, prospective, randomized clinical trials; 2) large cohorts of retrospective observational studies; and when these are lacking, 3) reliance on our knowledge and understanding of firm, basic scientific principles, as well as our individual and collective accumulated experiences. Nevertheless, notwithstanding our best intentions to “stick to evidence-based medicine,” and irrespective of medical or surgical specialty, a significant portion of our daily clinical practices remain rooted in dogma, dictum and tradition. In other words, “that is how we always did it.” The field of infectious diseases is no exception, particularly surrounding the general overall concept of anti-infective therapies and specifically in relationship to how, when and why we prescribe antibiotics and for how long they are administered. Traditional infectious diseases practices that were once strictly adhered to — such as treating asymptomatic bacteriuria before total joint arthroplasty surgery, prolonged pre-emptive empiric administration of broad-spectrum antibiotics for type III open orthopedic fractures, and double or dual coverage for infections caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa — have since either convincingly been disproven as being beneficial or have come under closer scrutiny and are now carried out only in certain specific circumstances.