A letter sent to the highest antibiotic-prescribing General Practitioners (GPs) in Northern Ireland was tied to a nearly 5% reduction in prescribing in those practices over the course of a year, researchers reported yesterday in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.
US scientists have developed and validated a clinical decision guideline (CDG) for flu testing in emergency departments, according to a study yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) today reported one more MERS-CoV case, which involves a patient from Al Kharj. This is the second case to originate in that city in the past week.
Sepsis patients who received a slightly higher emergency department (ED) triage score received antibiotics faster, a crucial step for survival, researchers from Intermountain Medical Center reported yesterday at the American Thoracic Society annual meeting under way in Dallas.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday closed its investigation into a multistate Salmonella outbreak tied to frozen tuna after confirming two new cases.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday provided new details in the investigation into a Salmonella Concord outbreak linked to imported tahini. No new illnesses have been reported, and the total stands at four infected people in three states. One patient has been hospitalized. The latest illness onset was Mar 23.
Our weekly wrap-up of antimicrobial stewardship & antimicrobial resistance scans
Federal health officials and their state partners are investigating an Escherichia coli O126 outbreak linked to flour sold at Aldi stores in 11 states in the eastern part of the country. So far, 17 illnesses have been reported in eight states, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a May 24 outbreak announcement.
A multicenter study looking at total durations of antibiotic exposure related to hospitalization indicates that more than a third of hospital-related antibiotic exposure occurs after patients are discharged from the hospital, researchers from Duke and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported yesterday in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
A group of patients in Inner Mongolia likely represent the first identified human cases of a new tick-borne illness, Alongshan virus (ALSV), which belongs to the jingmenvirus group in the flavivirus family. A description of ALSV and these cases was published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The World Health Organization (WHO) polio emergency committee met for the 21st time last week and unanimously agreed that the spread of polio still remains a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) under International Health Regulations.
Close human interaction was highly associated with extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae (ESBL-KP) but less so with ESBL-producing Escherichia coli (ESBL-EC) in a nursing home setting, according to a study by French researchers yesterday in PLOS Computational Biology.
Researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center have found a dose-dependent association between infant antibiotic exposure and subsequent development of childhood asthma, according to a new study in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
In its regular weekly report on measles, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today reported 41 more illnesses since its update the previous week, boosting the year's total so far to 981 cases. The CDC added that this year's number so far is the highest in the United States since 1992 and the highest since the disease was eliminated in 2000.
Since November 2018, hospitals in the Tuscany region of Italy have reported 350 cases of New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM)-producing carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported yesterday in a rapid risk assessment.
A nationwide team of pediatric infectious disease and emergency medicine specialists has developed a new scoring system to identify febrile infants with a low probability of invasive bacterial infection (IBI), according to a paper yesterday in Pediatrics.
Rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and trichomoniasis—four curable sexually transmitted infections (STIs)—have not declined significantly since 2012, according to a report today from the World Health Organization (WHO). In fact, as many as 1 million diagnoses of these STIs are made each day, representing an enormous public health burden.
An investigational drug to treat highly resistant strains of tuberculosis (TB) took another step in the regulatory approval process yesterday.
Researchers in Scotland report in PLOS Medicine that implementation of an antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) was associated with large, sustained reductions in the prescribing of three broad-spectrum antimicrobials and in a modest reduction of coliform bacteremia resistance rates.
Solithromycin, a novel fourth-generation macrolide, isn't a suitable alternative to standard therapy of ceftriaxone plus azithromycin for treating gonorrhea, according to a study yesterday by researchers from Australia and the United States in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
A large study to assess if a new guideline recommending live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV, or FluMist) for children over age 2 years with asthma found no increase in lower respiratory events following vaccination. A research team from HealthPartners, a Minnesota-based healthcare and insurance provider, published its findings yesterday in Vaccine.
A Department of Defense (DOD) study that compared vaccine effectiveness (VE) of cell-based and egg-based flu vaccines found that the egg-produced version performed significantly better against the 2009 H1N1 strain, and the cell-based version performed better against H3N2, though the difference wasn't statistically significant. Researchers published their findings yesterday in Vaccine.
Canada's chief public health officer, Theresa Tam, BMBS, issued a report this week aiming to raise awareness among both the public and healthcare professionals about the needless use of antibiotics and how to preserve the drugs' effectiveness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today confirmed 227 new cases of Salmonella infection tied to backyard poultry such as chicks and ducklings, swelling the outbreak to 279 cases in 41 states.
