Antibiotic Resistance

News that the European Union granted conditional approval of Merck’s investigational Ebola vaccine, Ervebo — which has been used effectively in the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — was the top story in infectious disease last week.

According to newly updated estimates published by the CDC, more than 2.8 million infections are caused by antibiotic-resistant pathogens annually in the United Sates, resulting in at least 35,000 deaths. That is one infection every 11 seconds and one death every 15 minutes.

Although the current approach to incentivizing antibiotic development has led to the creation of effective treatments, the pipeline has collapsed numerous times, leaving clinicians stranded against increasingly resistant infections, according to an article published the Annals of Internal Medicine.

WASHINGTON — In this video from IDWeek, Carlos del Rio, MD, FIDSA, past chair of the HIV Medicine Association and professor of medicine and chair of the department of global health at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, discusses spending “a day on the Hill” meeting with Congressional representatives.

Pregnant women should be screened for asymptomatic bacteriuria using a urine culture, according to a U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation statement published in JAMA.

The proportion of pathogens infecting chickens and pigs in developing countries that are also significantly resistant to antibiotics grew from 2000 to 2018, with the highest levels of resistance seen in China and India, a newly published analysis showed.

ZuraGard, a novel preoperative skin antiseptic, was shown to be effective in reducing bacterial counts on the skin of healthy volunteers in two phase 2 trials, performing comparably to the standard antiseptic ChloraPrep, researchers reported.