Zoonotic Infections News

It was my first week of intern year, in the medical ICU. He presented in extremis and died within 90 minutes. He was reportedly bitten by his dog 3 days prior. I remember leaving the MICU in tears, overcome with emotion, feelings of guilt and helplessness, wishing I could have changed his outcome. When his admission blood cultures later grew Capnocytophaga canimorsus, I was intrigued. I was unfamiliar with the organism at the time and yearned to learn more. Henceforth, I was “hooked on ID,” forever.

Research has shown that an influenza pandemic is more likely to strike in the spring or summer than at the height of seasonal influenza season. But is there any way to predict exactly when the next one will occur? Infectious Disease News asked Peter Palese, PhD, professor and chair of the department of microbiology in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, if the world is due.

Influenza seasons are often unpredictable in timing, severity and which virus will predominate. Influenza pandemics, caused by novel viruses, are always unpredictable. The last one, in 2009, marked the emergence of a new influenza A(H1N1) virus — originally called “swine flu” — and the first influenza pandemic in 41 years.

Bats are responsible for most rabies cases in the United States, accounting for roughly 70% of locally acquired infections over the past 6o years, according to a report published today in MMWR.

Researchers in northeastern China discovered a new segmented RNA virus associated with febrile illness in dozens of patients, and they suspect that the virus is transmitted by ticks, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The rates of chronic disease and death from Q fever may be higher than previously thought, according to study results from California.

My path toward the field of infectious diseases was a bit winding. My love for immunology began at a young age. I was inspired to become an immunologist by my father, a rheumatologist and immunologist, whose license plate happens to be “T cell.” From the beginning, he made learning about the immune system fun and this still rings true with me today. At age 15, I spent my summer in the Cleveland Clinic microbiology lab with Dr. Belinda Yen-Lieberman. She taught me about virology, and I became fascinated with HIV. I always knew I wanted to be a rheumatologist but discovered that the intersection of infectious disease and rheumatology was the niche for me. With an immense amount of support from Carlos Isada, my ID program director, and Abby Abelson, my rheumatology program director, as well as from my father, I was fortunate to serve as the beta test subject of a 3-year combined fellowship in rheumatology and infectious disease, from which I graduated in 2018. Dr. Isada is the type of physician who is hard to come by these days — being a doctor is not “just a job” for him, but a life passion, and learning from him made it impossible to do anything but love the field of infectious diseases. Today I am lucky to practice medicine at the intersection of my two passions — seeing patients with infectious complications of immunosuppression, rheumatic manifestations of infections and HIV, and focusing on infection prevention and immunization. I am also lucky to get to work with my dad every day (and my sister, who also works in my department). I learn something new and have fun every day.

Although smallpox has been eradicated, monkeypox has not. Monkeypox, which can easily be confused clinically with smallpox, should it ever reappear, is a disease found in central and western Africa. Although the reservoir is thought to be primarily in rodents, outbreaks can occur in other mammals including monkeys and humans. The virus has been isolated from wild animals in nature only twice, once from a rope squirrel in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, and once from a sooty mangabey in the Ivory Coast. Monkeypox is probably a very old disease, although it has been recognized only in the past 50 years.

The Culex tarsalis mosquito is the primary vector of West Nile virus infection in Iowa, and the highest rates of transmission were found in the western region of the state, researchers reported in Nature.

Data from 14 years of Nipah virus outbreaks in Bangladesh demonstrated that older patients with respiratory symptoms generated more secondary cases, and that the risk for infection was highest among individuals with prolonged contact with case patients, especially spouses.