Zoonotic Infections News

The index case in the 2017 Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, was infected through close contact with bush meat, researchers determined.

People wait an average of 10 days before seeking medical advice after being exposed to potentially rabid animals overseas, and people in the United Kingdom wait an average of 3 days to seek treatment following a bat encounter, according to findings from two studies presented at European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.

People who handle live camels are at an increased risk for infection with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, according to a study findings from the United Arab Emirates.

The phone call came while I was celebrating Christmas with my husband’s family during my first year of medical school. My grandfather, a World War II veteran, both a best friend and hero of mine, had died. He died of septic shock secondary to MRSA in the ICU in which I would eventually rotate in as a resident. He died under the care of an intensivist who would ultimately become my attending. As my training continued, I was drawn to the ICU; the sickest of the sick. There are profound ties between infectious diseases and critical care. In the ICU, patients are either presenting with life-threatening infections, or, in the process of providing critical care, we place devices that carry risk for infection, and thus every day demands attention to the appropriate diagnosis, treatment and prevention of infection. As an infectious disease and critical care physician, I have been blessed to have many physician mentors in both fields. But truth be told, my greatest mentor is the one I lost. Every day, his death challenges me to continue to improve the outcomes for our critically ill patients.

Bacteria samples from four animals at a small animal hospital in the United Kingdom were found to be resistant to linezolid, an antibiotic that is often used as a “last resort” for gram-positive infections in humans, according to a presentation at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Researchers raised concerns that the gene causing the drug resistance, known as optrA, may leap from animals to humans.

Many animals featured at petting zoos may be colonized with one or more strains of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase, or ESBL, and AmpC-producing Enterobacteriaceae, according to research presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases.

A rapid public health response was credited with keeping a “massive” anthrax outbreak at a national park in Namibia from spilling over to infect humans or livestock, according to a report published today in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

“Typhus is not dead. It will live on for centuries and it will continue to break into the open whenever human stupidity and brutality give it a chance, as most likely they occasionally will.” – Hans Zinsser. The lure of infectious disease began with books (science fiction, noir detectives, Arrowsmith), but the hook was sex and drugs. While debating a life in philosophy or neuroscience (but for the slaughter of mice), I stumbled into volunteering at the Berkeley Free Clinic. Mentored by charismatics at the radical front of free health care and harm reduction with dignity, these teachers had weathered the Vietnam War, AIDS crisis and multiple injection-drug epidemics. To keep up and care for clients, I had to understand not only chlamydia, abscesses and hepatitis C, but also feminism, gay liberation, sex work, homelessness and criminal justice. The infections were a window into the vulnerabilities of our social immune system. At the University of California, San Francisco, my ID teachers varied widely in appearance and constitution, as well as where they would return after rounds: the laboratories, the clinics, phone meetings with WHO, the city’s public health department and the one attending who would stop by the freeway underpass to sit with one of her struggling patients. ID was the hopeful work of hopelessly tangled systems: global commerce and immunoglobulins; gender, power and negotiating condoms; heroin, the hospital venting systems and where the water flows. My ID mentors and colleagues continue to inspire and surprise me with endless curiosity, rigorous intellectual integrity and ferocious passion for doing the right thing. Typhus is not dead, nor are MRSA, HIV, or human brutality. I am grateful to be an ID physician who can draw on a rich history and community to push against these with vigor and compassion, immersed in the ambitious life’s work of sex, drugs and microbes.

An analysis of “sentinel chickens” implicated the Florida Panhandle as the likely epicenter for Eastern equine encephalitis virus, or EEEV, in the United States, according to findings reported in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

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.