News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – H1N1 flu patients who were also infected with a common cause of pneumonia were 125 times more likely to develop life-threatening disease, a team of American and Argentinean researchers reported Thursday.

(CIDRAP News) – In a worrisome but not unexpected pandemic-related development, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today that it is seeing a spike in serious pneumococcal disease, particularly in younger patients.

Editor's note: This story was revised Sep 29 to correct a detail about when pneumonia cases were diagnosed.

(CIDRAP News) – A wide range of research findings on pandemic H1N1 influenza, seasonal flu, and avian flu was presented over the weekend at the 49th annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) in San Francisco (www.icaac.org).

– The annual meeting of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America took place Mar 20-22 in San Diego. This News Scan Special Edition surveys a selection of the abundant research from that meeting on combating MRSA in healthcare institutions.