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The drug may cut all-cause mortality in patients with severe C difficile infection.
In a sign of an ongoing steady stream of H7N9 avian flu cases, five new infections have been reported, four from China's mainland plus an imported infection in Taiwan, according to statements yesterday and today from Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP).
Clinic visits and hospitalizations for flu rose again last week, with the disease now widespread in 40 states and Puerto Rico.
Our weekly wrap-up of antimicrobial stewardship & antimicrobial resistance scans
Originally published by CIDRAP News Feb 1
Today China reported two more cases of H7N9 avian flu in Sichuan province, according to FluTrackers, an infectious disease tracking message board. The patients are in critical condition. According to translated news reports, no close family contacts have tested positive for the highly pathogenic strain.
A fivefold increase in less than a month—to more than 700 cases—is unusual for sylvatic (jungle) yellow fever, one expert points out.
UK researchers report that a frontline drug combo failed in 4 patients.
The vaccine protected macaques from infection 5 weeks later and mice 5 months later.
Two more H7N9 avian influenza infections were reported from China, both of them involving men from Hubei province in the central part of the country, Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection (CHP) said today in a statement.
The men, ages 40 and 55, are hospitalized in critical condition in Wuhan.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) today, along with several other science and medical groups, issued a statement today expressing deep concerns about the impact of a recent executive order restricting entrance by foreign nationals into the United States.
The authors call findings in gram-negative bacteria "especially worrying."
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LAC DPH) reported yesterday that a bacterial isolate harboring the MCR-1 gene, which confers resistance to the last-resort antibiotic colistin, has been identified in a patient with an Escherichia coli infection.
Portugal yesterday reported its first highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza detection, in a grey heron found dead near the southern city of Faro, according to a notice yesterday from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In several countries in Europe and other regions that have had H5N8 outbreaks, the virus was first found in wild birds before jumping to poultry.
Finland, Poland, and the UK also report new H5N8 avian flu outbreaks.
A team of researchers has detected a high abundance and diversity of antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese coastal estuaries, according to a study yesterday in Nature Microbiology.
A study yesterday in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that 0.2% of US women they screened contracted Zika after traveling to endemic areas while pregnant.
France reports three low-path strains that struck poultry last year, Greece detects H5N5 for the first time, and Germany detects high-path H5N2.
Giving pregnant women a dose of azithromycin during labor reduces infections in both mothers and newborns, according to a new study in Pediatrics. But an accompanying commentary suggests the harms of azithromycin exposure could outweigh the benefits.
Signaling an ongoing rise in H7N9 avian flu activity in China, the country's Liaoning province in the northeast today reported two cases, according to a local health department statement translated and posted today by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
For the first time this season, the marker for pneumonia and flu deaths rose above the seasonal and epidemic thresholds.
