Respiratory Infections News

The AAP recently announced that children can be vaccinated with either an inactivated influenza vaccine or a live-attenuated influenza vaccine for the 2019-2020 influenza season.

Three women who were hospitalized with botulism last year in New York City were sickened after eating potato salad containing improperly home-canned peas, an investigation found.

SEATTLE — Infectious Disease News spoke with Amita Gupta, MD, associate professor of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, about tuberculosis prevention among people living with HIV.

SEATTLE — A short-course drug regimen to prevent tuberculosis was found to be safe in patients with HIV on dolutegravir therapy, while not reducing the HIV drug’s effectiveness, according to study results presented at CROI.

TB Alliance announced that the FDA has accepted a new drug application for its novel tuberculosis drug candidate, pretomanid, as part of a drug regimen used to treat extensively drug-resistant TB; treatment-intolerant, multidrug-resistant TB; and treatment-nonresponsive, multidrug-resistant TB.

Children from low-income households are more likely to have respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses but are less likely to miss school compared with children from families with higher incomes, according to a study conducted by the CDC.

Electronically delivered prescribing feedback led to “moderate” reductions in unnecessary antibiotic prescribing for respiratory tract infections during a study conducted among general practitioners in the United Kingdom, researchers said.

Weight change early in therapy predicted outcomes of childhood tuberculosis therapy, according to study results published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

As a fourth-year medical student at the University of South Florida College of Medicine, I did an elective rotation with Dr. John Greene at Moffitt Cancer Center. I was awestruck as I saw the fellows and Dr. Greene make incredible diagnoses based on details from the patients’ histories. We conversed with radiologists, pathologists, other internal medicine subspecialists and surgeons; a constant busy mission to determine what kind of infections patients had. Their knowledge was superior, having to understand different cultures, practices and hobbies that could lead to the diagnosis. I witnessed the way that the infectious disease physicians conversed with others; their pleasant demeanor toward patients and staff was infectious. Most compelling of all was the microbiology lab, where you came face to face with your patients’ foes: Staphylococcus, Acinetobacter, Fusarium, Cryptosporidium, etc. This to me was the defining moment: looking into the viewing ocular pieces of the microscope to view something that was a millionth our size and had the potential to cause incredible pathologic havoc. This experience, which I also had during my internal medicine residency, is what led me to my interest in host-pathogen responses and to choose a career in infectious diseases.

Compared with standard-dose influenza vaccines, the high-dose vaccine is more effective in preventing influenza- or pneumonia-associated hospitalizations, cardiorespiratory hospitalizations, and all-cause hospitalizations among adults aged 65 and older, data from around 1.7 million patients showed.