Respiratory Infections News

When compared with health care-associated pneumonia criteria, electronic calculation of a prediction score more accurately predicted the risk for drug-resistant pathogens in patients with community-acquired pneumonia, new data published in Chest suggest.

Merck announced that its investigational 15-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, or V114, was noninferior in protecting against the serotypes included in Pfizer’s 13-valent vaccine in children aged 6 to 12 weeks. V114 also produced an immune response in infants for two additional serotypes that cause disease — 22F and 33F.

The NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded $30 million to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to research children’s first exposures to influenza and how their immune system reacts to infection in the future.

ATLANTA — Investigators traced a cluster of legionellosis cases at a horse race track in West Virginia to a poorly maintained hot tub in the jockey locker room.

ATLANTA — In this video, Kara Levinson, PhD, MPH, a Laboratory Leadership Service fellow at the CDC, discusses a large legionellosis outbreak that occurred in New Hampshire in August 2018, infecting 34 people and killing two.

Infants born through cesarean section are more likely to require hospitalization for bronchiolitis compared with infants born through spontaneous vaginal delivery, according to research presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting. Researchers said the season in which the infant is born may also affect the risk for hospitalization.

New data suggest that treating community-acquired pneumonia with corticosteroids in addition to antibiotics may lead to significant cost-savings to the health care system, particularly among those with severe disease.

The incidence of most foodborne infections increased last year in the United States, according to newly published data from the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, or FoodNet.

People who handle live camels are at an increased risk for infection with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, according to a study findings from the United Arab Emirates.

Thanks to a highly effective vaccination program in the United States, measles was declared eliminated in 2000. Since then, imported cases of measles have caused numerous outbreaks in vulnerable populations throughout the country, and experts warn that the disease could easily make a comeback if vaccination rates continue to drop.