Zoonotic Infections News

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!

Leptospirosis is a bacterial infection produced by spirochetes in the genus Leptospira. Leptospira are aerobic but are difficult to cultivate and take many days to grow. They stain poorly with Gram’s stain and are best visualized with silver stain, dark field microscopy or fluorescent microscopy.

Bats and bat hunters in northeast India carry reactive antibodies to Ebola and Marburg viruses, indicating that the filoviruses circulate among local bats and are possibly transmitted to humans, according to study findings published today in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

The CDC launched a national campaign called Life is Better with Clean Hands to promote the importance of hand-washing among adults.

I did my internal medicine residency at Yale New Haven Hospital in the years immediately before the advent of protease inhibitors would change the face of ART. In addition to caring for many young gay men with AIDS, I saw the side of the epidemic that even today remains relatively hidden in the United States, and is operative throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa: young women — often black — who presented late in the disease, having been infected by boyfriends or husbands. I was on call when one of my favorite patients, Shirley B., was admitted to die, and the team paged me to let me know so I could see her. I’ll never forget their kindness in doing that and my visit to her room. These experiences solidified not only my interest in ID but in advancing women’s reproductive health and autonomy related to ID and HIV prevention. Vaginal health? Female-controlled prevention methods? These were not sexy concepts that attracted big names during my subsequent training and early research career. Luckily, through persistence and commitment and probably some measure of stubborn cluelessness, I connected with some brave visionary mentors who believed there was a future in this arena and who themselves had battled for sexual and reproductive health — women, LGBT people, others not always at the proverbial table when funding or policy priorities are set. The rest is my personal history, and I know that only in ID would I have been able to accomplish any of it.

Babesiosis in humans is a tick-borne infection. In the United States, babesiosis is usually caused by the protozoan Babesia microti, an obligate intracellular parasite of erythrocytes. B. microti occasionally causes disease in Europe, Asia, Central America and Australia. Babesiosis is transmitted by different ticks throughout the world, mainly to wild and domesticated animals. Another species, Babesia duncani, has been the cause of babesiosis cases on the West Coast of the U.S. In Europe, most cases of human babesiosis are caused by Babesia divergens, which has also caused a limited number of cases in the U.S. Unlike B. microti, nearly all symptomatic cases caused by B. divergens are severe and occur in people without spleens. Babesia venatorum is another cause of babesiosis in humans and is found in Europe and China. This discussion will be limited to babesiosis caused by B. microti, which is responsible for the vast majority of cases of babesiosis in the U.S.

Amid a rise in tick-borne disease in the United States, the NIH announced a plan to “build on — and accelerate — new and existing research initiatives to improve scientific understanding of ticks and the pathogens they may transmit and to develop the necessary tools and strategies to better diagnose, prevent and treat tick-borne diseases.”

WASHINGTON — Infectious Disease News and Healio.com are onsite at IDWeek 2019 to provide live coverage of the conference, held from Oct. 2 to 6.

Bavarian Nordic announced that the FDA has approved Jynneos, a live, nonreplicating vaccine for the prevention of smallpox and monkeypox disease in adults aged 18 years or older who are at a high risk for smallpox or monkeypox infection.

Infectious diseases had been a big part of my training in medical school in India, where I cared for and learned from patients with a wide variety of infections from extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis to cerebral malaria to Japanese encephalitis to all types of vaccine-preventable diseases because of lack of health care access. I became fascinated by the specialty, and my interest was further bolstered by role models in residency. A fellowship in a strong inner-city clinical program under awesome mentors with a plethora of pathology was invaluable for the years to come. My first job out of training was in a rural community hospital and Federally Qualified Health Center as the first ID physician in the center. It’s been a rewarding experience to start and run a very busy rural ID practice, taking care of uninsured and underinsured patients in an area with a shortage of health professionals. Sharing strong bonds with patients living with HIV over last 7 years in a small rural community has been a learning experience about their challenges and successes. Absorbing the business side of medicine as a medical director has been equally eye opening. My role as a hospital epidemiologist and stewardship lead has allowed me to build cherished relationships with several medical specialties and hospital staff. I have to admit that I have also learned from patients and communities who may not always agree with me (with respect to management of Lyme disease and vaccine refusal). Keeping the dialogue open is the key.