Respiratory Infections News

Just 10 years ago, patients with HIV and end-stage renal disease were often sent home to die from Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, because of limited access to dialysis and a shrinking organ donor pool. Then, in a pioneering program, physicians at the hospital began transplanting kidneys from HIV-positive donors into HIV-positive recipients, starting with four successful transplants. They announced the new therapeutic approach in a six-paragraph letter to The New England Journal of Medicine.

In July 1988, the first issue of Infectious Disease News was published (Figure 1, that’s right, I kept it all these years), with Dr. Ted Eickhoff as the Chief Medical Editor. Virtually all adult and pediatric infectious disease specialists received it at no cost. And although unsolicited publications (freebies) are often mostly a glorified collection of advertisements, IDN seemed different, with meaningful, well-written pieces, by very reputable experts, supplemented by high-quality pictures on glossy paper. It took the reputation of Dr. Eickhoff to recruit leading experts to contribute and his academic leadership to ensure overall quality.

An outbreak of Chryseobacterium indologenes that affected 12 patients in ICUs in Spain, resulting in one death, was possibly caused by drainage water from hand-washing sinks, underscoring the need to protect patients and equipment from sink splashes to avoid infection and contamination, according to researchers.

In one Canadian province, for every day that passed from the start of an influenza A (H3N2) outbreak in long-term care facilities to the initiation of Tamiflu, the odds of an at-risk resident developing symptomatic infection increased by 33%, according to findings published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

According to researchers, disgust as a human emotion has evolved to help protect us against infectious diseases.

Researchers found low adherence to Infectious Diseases Society of America clinical practice guidelines for group A streptococcal pharyngitis among physicians in a pediatric ambulatory setting. A quality improvement initiative, which included education for providers, patients and families on testing and antibiotic use for the condition, improved unnecessary testing.

In patients with indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma, or iNHL, treatment with bendamustine is associated with an increased risk for common and opportunistic infections compared with other chemotherapy regimens, researchers reported in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Infants whose mothers received prenatal Tdap were more than 40% less likely to experience pertussis when compared with infants of mothers who were not immunized, according to recently published research in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

A review of national outpatient data collected during two recent influenza seasons in the United States found widespread overuse of antibiotics for acute respiratory infections, researchers reported.

Fujirebio Diagnostics has received FDA clearance for a new procalcitonin, or PCT, assay to be used on its Lumipulse G1200 immunoassay platform, the company announced.