Zoonotic Infections News

An emergency committee convened by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, MSc, met for the second time today to review the ongoing coronavirus outbreak that originated in Wuhan, China, and recommended against declaring it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, or PHEIC, at this time.

WHO is not yet ready to decide if the Chinese coronavirus outbreak is a global public health emergency.

Eastern equine encephalitis, or EEE, is a serious disease of horses and, rarely, humans. However, there was an unusual and dramatic increase in human cases in the United States in 2019. Historically, the CDC reported 72 neuroinvasive cases in the U.S. from 2009 to 2018. During those 10 years, there was an average of seven cases of neuroinvasive disease each year, with a low of three in 2009 and a high of 15 in 2012. Most cases were reported from Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York and North Carolina. In 2019, the human case number was five times higher than the average, with eight states involved (see Table). Some of the affected localities even cancelled outdoor activities to reduce the risk for becoming infected. It is unclear why the increase occurred and if it will continue in future years.

Some decisions in life are quite difficult and complex; others come more easily and naturally. For me, the latter was the case with my decision to pursue a career in infectious diseases. From early first year pharmacology classes, to learning at the feet of ID giants like Harold Neu, Glenda Garvey, Mark Goldberger and many others in my 3rd and 4th years, going into ID was an easy choice.

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.

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.

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.

Cases of dengue infection declined significantly in areas of Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam where lab-grown mosquitos carrying Wolbachia were released, according to findings presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Annual Meeting.

I fell in love with immunology as a first-year medical student at Harvard in a class taught by the Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Baruj Benacerraf. It was the mid-1980s, and the HIV epidemic was emerging in all its perplexing horror, the virus devastating the immune system through unknown means. I had friends who were stigmatized and dying from HIV, which made it personal. When I was a third-year medical student in 1987, Chip Schooley was my ID attending. He was involved in clinical trials to treat HIV as well as laboratory research to understand HIV immunology. His brilliance and passion for patient care and research were inspiring, and that is when I became hooked on ID! I decided then that I would dedicate my career to fighting the HIV epidemic through clinical care and research to unravel how HIV evades and depletes the immune system. I was fortunate that Chip recruited me to perform my ID fellowship at the University of Colorado and then to join the faculty. Although there were many challenges, the path has been fulfilling. I would encourage anyone who wishes to pursue an academic career in ID to focus on what they think is important and find good mentors!