Bacterial Infections News

The mantra “shorter is better” for antibiotic durations has become a point of importance in the infectious disease and antimicrobial stewardship realms.

TORONTO — Shorter courses of antibiotics were associated with increased odds of reinfection and death among infants treated in the NICU for Escherichia coli bacteremia who were not evaluated for meningitis, a study showed.

Participation in the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting is back to pre-COVID-19 levels of engagement, according to one of the event’s program chairs.

HOUSTON — A Staphylococcus aureus screening program paired with genomic sequencing and electronic health data improved a New York hospital’s ability to identify transmissions and patients at high risk, according to a study.

Assessing children hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia for certain objective measures of clinical stability could help shorten their stays, according to a study published in Pediatrics.

Replacing contaminated sinks did not end an outbreak of multidrug-resistant bacteria in a Japanese pediatric ward but other infection prevention measures did, such as forbidding mouth-washing using sink water, researchers reported.

The FDA this week approved the antibiotic Zevtera for the treatment of three bacterial infections 17 years after it was first submitted to the agency.

During the winter holidays, a 12-year-old girl was seen in her primary care clinic with fever, fatigue, cough and sore throat. At that time, she was thought to likely have strep throat, but her rapid strep test was negative.

Diagnostic stewardship, along with targeted prevention efforts and a testing and treatment clinical care pathway, reduced hospital-onset cases of Clostridioides difficile by more than 50% in a children’s hospital, researchers reported.

Three pediatric hospitals that discontinued contact precautions for MRSA did not see an associated increase in MRSA over the course of the next 4 years, according to researchers published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.