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Our weekly wrap-up of antimicrobial stewardship & antimicrobial resistance scans
In patients hospitalized with serious infections from carbapenem-resistant gram-negative bacteria, a combination of colistin and meropenem wasn't associated with fewer clinical failures compared with colistin alone, researchers reported today in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Protection is 36% overall, 25% against H3N2, 67% against H1N1, and 42% against flu B.
H9N2 avian flu typically circulates in birds as a low-pathogenic strain.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today that a multistate Salmonella outbreak—first announced a month ago—appears to be over after it reached 27 cases in nine states.
The high-dose flu vaccine is 38% more effective in protecting elderly people against laboratory-confirmed influenza than the standard-dose vaccine, according to a study of Veterans Health Administration (VHA) senior patients published yesterday in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Even an epidemic in a far-off country could do major damage to the US economy, experts say.
Low-income nations have a 60% higher risk of infection.
Italian scientists this week reported detecting the MCR-1 colistin-resistance gene in 26 Escherichia coli isolates among more than 19,000 Enterobacteriaceae that they tested as part of surveillance efforts in Romagna in northern Italy.
China has reported the world's first known novel H7N4 avian flu infection in a human, according to a report today from Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP), which based its information on a notification from the mainland's National Health and Family Planning Commission.
A probe of child flu deaths over 6 seasons found vaccination gaps and a somber reminder that even healthy kids can succumb.
The newly identified molecules, called malacidins, are linked to a family of antibiotics that require calcium for antibacterial activity.
The Trump administration yesterday released its budget proposal for the 2019 fiscal year, and it would cut the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget by about $900 million, with some increases for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Iraq is battling another H5N8 detection, and in South Korea, H5N6 was found on another commercial farm.
The ECDC reports 14,451 cases in 2017, up from 4,643 in 2016. Also, vaccination in Ghana is tied to higher childhood survival rates.
The results of a survey of physicians published today in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology indicate that when treating patients at the end of life, physicians' decisions about continuing antimicrobial use are influenced by many factors.
China has reported another H7N9 avian flu infection, marking only the third case of the sixth wave of illness activity that began in October, according to a report today from Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP).
"This year is not a pandemic, but the high ILI is a sign of the severity," CDC Director Anne Schuchat says.
With the Winter Olympics just getting under way in South Korea, a norovirus outbreak has sidelined 32 workers, including 21 from the security staff, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Authorities have called in military personnel to help with security.
A series of papers yesterday in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology by researchers and clinicians with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) identifies key knowledge gaps and lays out research agendas to address the spread of drug-resistant pathogens in healthcare settings.
