News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Saying current treatment practices vary widely, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) today released lengthy guidelines for treating methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, which the group said now account for most of the skin infections that send people to emergency rooms.

(CIDRAP News) – A new large-scale study of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections shows that infection rates have dropped in hospitalized people and those recently exposed to healthcare settings, but experts aren't sure what factors are driving the decline.

(CIDRAP News) – Studies published today confirm that influenza A/H1N1 viruses have become widely resistant to oseltamivir (Tamiflu), the leading flu drug, without losing their ability to make people sick—thereby underlining the need for new antiviral drugs.

– TORONTO (CIDRAP News) – Scientists are uncovering naturally occurring resistance in influenza to the antiviral drugs that can prevent or treat it, potentially complicating plans by international authorities and many countries to build large drug stockpiles as a hedge against a pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – Japanese researchers who identified antiviral-resistant strains of influenza B found that they seemed to circulate in communities and families and to make patients just as sick as their nonresistant counterparts did, contrary to a common assumption that resistant flu viruses are likely to be less transmissible and less virulent.

(CIDRAP News) – Macrolide antibiotics, the mainstay of treatment for community-acquired pneumonia, are encountering increasing resistance from Streptococcus pneumoniae, the most common cause of the disease, according to a report in the Oct 17 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.