Respiratory Infections News

Enterovirus D-68, or EV-D68, was detected in only two U.S. patients with acute respiratory illness in 2017. By 2018, nearly 14% of patients — mostly young children — tested positive for the virus, according to a recent MMWR.

The microbiome of children’s nasopharynx very closely resembles the viral and bacterial microbiome observed in deep endotracheal samples, according to findings published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. Researchers suggested that nasopharyngeal samples could be used as a proxy for lung microbiota, which could help clinicians better understand the causes of lower respiratory tract infections in children and tailor better treatment.

WHO fully released new treatment guidelines for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR-TB, and announced a package of actions it said is designed to help countries close gaps in care.

GlaxoSmithKline’s measles, mumps and rubella vaccine was found to be safe and effective in healthy children in a phase 3 clinical trial.

Tuberculosis cases in the United States in 2018 fell to the lowest level ever reported, according to preliminary surveillance data, but the rate of progress toward the goal of eliminating the disease in the U.S. has slowed, researchers reported in MMWR.

Click here to read the Cover Story, “PCV13 vaccination highly effective but complicated by serotype replacement”.

“Typhus is not dead. It will live on for centuries and it will continue to break into the open whenever human stupidity and brutality give it a chance, as most likely they occasionally will.” – Hans Zinsser. The lure of infectious disease began with books (science fiction, noir detectives, Arrowsmith), but the hook was sex and drugs. While debating a life in philosophy or neuroscience (but for the slaughter of mice), I stumbled into volunteering at the Berkeley Free Clinic. Mentored by charismatics at the radical front of free health care and harm reduction with dignity, these teachers had weathered the Vietnam War, AIDS crisis and multiple injection-drug epidemics. To keep up and care for clients, I had to understand not only chlamydia, abscesses and hepatitis C, but also feminism, gay liberation, sex work, homelessness and criminal justice. The infections were a window into the vulnerabilities of our social immune system. At the University of California, San Francisco, my ID teachers varied widely in appearance and constitution, as well as where they would return after rounds: the laboratories, the clinics, phone meetings with WHO, the city’s public health department and the one attending who would stop by the freeway underpass to sit with one of her struggling patients. ID was the hopeful work of hopelessly tangled systems: global commerce and immunoglobulins; gender, power and negotiating condoms; heroin, the hospital venting systems and where the water flows. My ID mentors and colleagues continue to inspire and surprise me with endless curiosity, rigorous intellectual integrity and ferocious passion for doing the right thing. Typhus is not dead, nor are MRSA, HIV, or human brutality. I am grateful to be an ID physician who can draw on a rich history and community to push against these with vigor and compassion, immersed in the ambitious life’s work of sex, drugs and microbes.

Research has shown that bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia may peak in late winter. According to the CDC, the populations at greatest risk for developing these diseases include children aged younger than 2 years and adults aged 65 years and older.

WHO recently announced a new global strategy for the years 2019 to 2030 that is aimed at protecting people in all countries from influenza.

Vancomycin and linezolid use among ventilated patients with suspected MRSA pneumonia can be significantly reduced by using a highly sensitive rapid diagnostic test on bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, researchers reported in the journal Chest.