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Dengue Fever Surge In South America Prompts Increased Vaccination Efforts, Bug Spray Shortages

Reuters (1/25, Elliott, Brito) reports, “South America is seeing a surge in cases of the mosquito-borne disease dengue during the southern hemisphere summer, prompting Brazil to roll out a novel vaccine campaign, while in Argentina many stores have run out of bug spray.” This month, Brazil “started spraying insecticide from trucks as the disease rips through previously unaffected regions.” Meanwhile “Argentina has recorded over 12,500 cases of the disease in the last month, according to the latest official health bulletin, a big jump versus the same period a year ago.”

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Study Finds Blastomycosis Becoming More Common In Unexpected Areas Of The US

NBC News (1/24, Sullivan) reports, “A rare fungal infection thought to mainly occur in the northern Midwest and parts of the Southeast is more common in other parts of the United States than expected, new research published Wednesday finds.” The infection, “blastomycosis, can be difficult to diagnose, in part because it can resemble other respiratory infections.” Although “it’s well known in areas around the Great Lakes, the Ohio River valley and the Mississippi River valley, it’s a bit more surprising for the infection to pop up in Vermont, but that’s exactly what was found in the new study, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.”

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Study Finds Current Practices For Detecting Latent TB Infection May Be Missing High-Risk Patients

Healio (1/24, Stulpin) reports, “Current practices for latent tuberculosis infection testing may be missing high-risk patients, according to a study assessing factors associated with testing and positivity, researchers said” in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Investigators “found that factors most associated with testing positive for LTBI were not the same as the factors associated with LTBI testing. For example, the study showed that factors associated with higher odds of testing positive included being male, Asian/Pacific Islander, currently smoking, having diabetes, hepatitis B or hepatitis C and birth in a country with an elevated TB rate, none of which were associated with higher odds of LTBI testing.”

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Antimicrobial Therapy Linked With Increased Mortality Risk Among Inpatients With Negative Blood Cultures, Study Finds

Infectious Disease Advisor (1/24, Kuhns) reports, “Antimicrobial therapy is frequently inappropriate and associated with increased mortality risk among inpatients with negative blood cultures. These study findings were published in the Journal of Infection.” In the study, “all-cause 30-day mortality occurred among 70 (8.7%) patients with negative blood cultures. The median time between hospitalization and discharge or mortality was 8 (IQR, 5-15) days.”

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Infants Born To Unvaccinated Mothers Who Had COVID-19 During Pregnancy Were At Higher Risk For Developing Neonatal Respiratory Distress, Study Finds

MedPage Today (1/24, Kahn) reports, “Infants born to unvaccinated mothers who had COVID-19 during pregnancy were at high risk for developing neonatal respiratory distress, the longitudinal, cohort COMP study found.” The risks “of developing respiratory distress were threefold higher in infants born to unvaccinated mothers diagnosed with COVID-19 while pregnant compared with COVID-exposed infants born to COVID-vaccinated mothers...reported” researchers in Nature Communications. HCP Live (1/24, Smith) reports, “The investigators noted that unvaccinated mothers were shown to have had greater incidence of severe or critical disease, at a rate of 16% compared to those who were vaccinated at 4%.”

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Researchers Recommend Expanding WHO’s Triple Testing Campaign For HIV, HBV, And HCV

Healio (1/23, Stulpin) reports, “WHO’s triple testing campaign” for HIV, HBV, and HCV “should be expanded across populations and not just to the three groups WHO listed to be most at risk, according to a study” published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. The researchers “determined that through triple testing, for every case of HIV identified, five would be diagnosed with HBV and three with HCV. They also said that triple testing would not be too costly because testing for all three viruses is available for $2.48 compared with the average cost of $1.00 for the lowest-priced isolated HIV test.”

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Risk Of All-Cause Mortality Similar In Patients With Uncomplicated, Gram-Negative Bacteremia Who Switched Early From Oral To IV Antibiotics, Study Finds

MedPage Today (1/23, Kahn) reports, “Risk of all-cause mortality was similar in patients with uncomplicated gram-negative bacteremia who switched early to oral antibiotics from IV antibiotics, according to retrospective, cohort study.” Among “patients who transitioned early to oral antibiotics, 6.9% died within a 3-month follow-up, compared with 14.3% of patients who received prolonged IV antibiotic treatment, Sandra Tingsgard, MD, from Copenhagen University Hospital–Amager and Hvidovre in Denmark, and colleagues, reported in JAMA Network Open.”

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CDC Data Indicate JN.1 COVID Variant Is Not More Severe

CBS News (1/23, Tin) reports, “Early data from hospitals suggests the latest COVID variant, known as JN.1, is not leading to more severe disease, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said Monday, as the agency has tracked the strain’s steep rise to an estimated 85.7% of COVID-19 cases nationwide.” However, “the agency is still waiting for more weeks of data to lay out its more detailed assessment of JN.1’s impact this season, the CDC official, Dr. Eduardo Azziz-Baumgartner, said at a webinar with testing laboratories hosted by the agency this week.”

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Virologic Suppression Can Be Maintained In Patients With HIV Receiving INSTI-Containing ART With Short-Course Rifapentine-Based Regimens For Latent TB Management

Infectious Disease Advisor (1/23, Nye) reports, “Virologic suppression can be maintained among patients with HIV infection receiving integrase strand transfer inhibitor (INSTI)-containing antiretroviral therapy (ART) in combination with short-course rifapentine-based regimens for latent tuberculosis (TB) management, according to study results published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.” In analysis, the study found the only factor “significantly associated with failure to maintain HIV virologic response (adjusted OR, 12.67; 95% CI, 2.92-54.98; P =.001)” was incarceration.

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Antibiotic Stewardship Program May Reduce Unnecessary Prescribing, Study Finds

Infectious Disease Advisor (1/23) reports, “A multifaceted outpatient antibiotic stewardship program may significantly reduce the frequency of unnecessary antibiotic prescribing among adults and children with Tier 3 upper respiratory tract infections, according to study findings published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.” In the study, “between the pre- and postintervention period, the rate of antibiotics prescribed for Tier 3 respiratory encounters significantly decreased (from 21.7% to 11.2%; P <.001).”

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Blood Test Could Be Used To Screen For Alzheimer’s Even Before Symptoms, Study Suggests

CNN (1/22, Howard) reports, “Testing a person’s blood for a type of protein called phosphorylated tau, or p-tau, could be used to screen for Alzheimer’s disease with ‘high accuracy,’ even before symptoms begin to show, a new study suggests.” The research “involved testing blood for a key biomarker of Alzheimer’s called p-tau217, which increases at the same time as other damaging proteins — beta amyloid and tau — build up in the brains of people with the disease.” The “simple blood test was found to be up to 96% accurate in identifying elevated levels of beta amyloid and up to 97% accurate in identifying tau.” The findings were published in JAMA Neurology.

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Clesrovimab, When Present In The Nasal Compartment, Can Neutralize RSV In Vitro, Study Finds

Pulmonology Advisor (1/22, Goldberg) reports, “Clesrovimab, when present in the nasal compartment, can neutralize respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in vitro, suggesting that infants could potentially receive passive immunization against RSV through the use of clesrovimab, according to study findings.” Researchers came to this conclusion after conducting “an analysis of 2 separate cohorts of human samples, PN001 (phase I adult human dose escalating study for clesrovimab to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of clesrovimab) and PN005 (healthy adult human RSV challenge study designed to inform a model-based meta-analysis [MBMA] that correlated RSV neutralization titers to RSV viral loads).” The research was published in Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.

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Opportunistic Test-And-Treat Approach Superior To Referral-Based Standard Care For Hospitalized Patients With HCV Infection With A History Of Injection Drug Use, Study Finds

Infectious Disease Advisor (1/22) reports, “An opportunistic test-and-treat approach is superior to referral-based standard care for individuals hospitalized with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection with a history of injection drug use, according to findings published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.” In the study, “treatment completion was achieved by 68.4% (95% CI, 58.2-77.4) of patients during intervention conditions and 35.3% (95% CI, 26.1-45.4) during control conditions (risk ratio, 1.9; 95% CI, 1.4-2.6).”

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WHO Chief Warns Against Missing Deadline For Countries To Sign On To Pandemic Preparedness Treaty

Reuters (1/22, Farge) reports, “Countries risk missing a May deadline for agreeing a legally binding treaty on fighting pandemics, which would be a big blow for future generations, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.” The new treaty “and a series of updates to existing rules on dealing with pandemics are intended to shore up the world’s defences against new pathogens after the COVID-19 pandemic killed more than 7 million people, according to WHO data.” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “I’m concerned that member states may not meet that commitment and there are several outstanding issues that remain to be resolved.”

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Scientists Evaluating Phages To Tackle Growing Problem Of Antimicrobial-Resistant Infections

CNN (1/21, LaMotte) reports that “one of nature’s oldest predators – tiny tripod-looking viruses called phages designed to find, attack and gobble up bacteria” – are being used to treat “patients dying from superbug infections and are being used in clinical trials as a potential solution to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.” These antimicrobial-resistant infections “are a ‘urgent global public health threat,’ killing 5 million people worldwide, according to 2019 statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” To increase the chance of “success, specialists search for a variety of phages to tackle a particularly nasty superbug – at times creating a cocktail of microscopic warriors that can hopefully continue the attack when one is neutralized.”

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Three Or More Maternal Doses Of COVID-19 Vaccine Enhance Antibody Concentrations In Preterm Infants Compared To Two Or Fewer Doses, Study Finds

Healio (1/19, Weldon) reported, “Three or more doses of maternal COVID-19 vaccine significantly enhance antibody concentrations in preterm infants compared with two or fewer doses, according to study results published in JAMA Network Open.” According to the research, “cord anti-S antibody geometric mean concentration was 1,000 (95% CI, 874-1,144) after two doses and 9,992 (95% CI, 8381-1,1914) after three or more doses.” MedPage Today (1/19, Kahn) reported, “Notably, cord anti-S antibody levels were similar in preterm and full-term pregnancies, with geometric mean concentrations of 8,818 and 10,423, respectively (P=0.34).”

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CDI May Be Underdiagnosed Among Outpatients Treated At Hospital For Diarrhea, Researchers Find

Healio (1/19, Stulpin) reported, “California hospitals detected a high incidence of Clostridioides difficile infection among outpatients treated for diarrhea despite a low rate of testing, suggesting that outpatient C. difficile may be underdiagnosed, researchers said.” Published in Infectious Diseases, out of 777,533 cases researchers identified, “12.1% were tested for CDI, according to the study. Among those tested, 10.8% were positive for CDI.”

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Switching To Oral Antibiotics Noninferior To IV Antibiotics For Low-Risk S. Aureus Bloodstream Infection, Study Finds

MedPage Today (1/19, Kahn) reported, “An early switch to oral antibiotics in patients hospitalized with low-risk Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infection was noninferior to IV antibiotics, according to the randomized controlled SABATO trial.” According to the study, which was published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, “the 0.7% (95% CI -7.8 to 9.1) treatment difference between the two groups met the noninferiority margin of less than 10% (P=0.013). Hospital stays were also shorter in patients switched to oral treatment (median 12 vs 16 days, respectively).”

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California, Oregon Break With CDC Guidance On COVID-19 Isolation Rules

The New York Times (1/21, Hubler, Hassan) reports, “Oregon and California, among the most cautious of states early in the pandemic, have surprised health officials elsewhere by breaking with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and telling infected workers and schoolchildren that as long as they have no symptoms, they are generally free to go about their lives.” However, this “has been greeted with trepidation by some health experts in the United States, especially as wastewater data shows a surge in cases driven by a new variant.” However, “many scientists say that Covid has transitioned from a public health crisis into more of a featured virus among an array of respiratory risks.”

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CDC Guidance Encourages Physicians To Consider More PFAS Blood Testing

ABC News (1/18, Benadjaoud) reports physicians “are now being encouraged to consider more blood testing for PFAS, also known as ‘forever chemicals,’ according to guidance released by the” CDC. The “agency is recommending providers have a discussion with their patients regarding consumer and environmental exposures to large levels of the chemicals, and if blood testing may be of benefit.” The CDC’s “new guidance advises providers to consider an individual’s exposure history; the results of PFAS testing from a patient’s water supply, food sources, or other exposures; and whether those results can inform regarding ways to reduce future exposures.” Bloomberg Law (1/18, Rizzuto, Subscription Publication) reports the updated guidance does not “mention chemical concentrations that would justify specific additional tests” physicians “could use to identify illnesses associated with” PFAS.

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Dengue Fever Surge In South America Prompts Increased Vaccination Efforts, Bug Spray Shortages

Study Finds Blastomycosis Becoming More Common In Unexpected Areas Of The US

Study Finds Current Practices For Detecting Latent TB Infection May Be Missing High-Risk Patients

Antimicrobial Therapy Linked With Increased Mortality Risk Among Inpatients With Negative Blood Cultures, Study Finds

Infants Born To Unvaccinated Mothers Who Had COVID-19 During Pregnancy Were At Higher Risk For Developing Neonatal Respiratory Distress, Study Finds

Researchers Recommend Expanding WHO’s Triple Testing Campaign For HIV, HBV, And HCV

Risk Of All-Cause Mortality Similar In Patients With Uncomplicated, Gram-Negative Bacteremia Who Switched Early From Oral To IV Antibiotics, Study Finds

CDC Data Indicate JN.1 COVID Variant Is Not More Severe

Virologic Suppression Can Be Maintained In Patients With HIV Receiving INSTI-Containing ART With Short-Course Rifapentine-Based Regimens For Latent TB Management

Antibiotic Stewardship Program May Reduce Unnecessary Prescribing, Study Finds

Blood Test Could Be Used To Screen For Alzheimer’s Even Before Symptoms, Study Suggests

Clesrovimab, When Present In The Nasal Compartment, Can Neutralize RSV In Vitro, Study Finds

Opportunistic Test-And-Treat Approach Superior To Referral-Based Standard Care For Hospitalized Patients With HCV Infection With A History Of Injection Drug Use, Study Finds

WHO Chief Warns Against Missing Deadline For Countries To Sign On To Pandemic Preparedness Treaty

Scientists Evaluating Phages To Tackle Growing Problem Of Antimicrobial-Resistant Infections

Three Or More Maternal Doses Of COVID-19 Vaccine Enhance Antibody Concentrations In Preterm Infants Compared To Two Or Fewer Doses, Study Finds

CDI May Be Underdiagnosed Among Outpatients Treated At Hospital For Diarrhea, Researchers Find

Switching To Oral Antibiotics Noninferior To IV Antibiotics For Low-Risk S. Aureus Bloodstream Infection, Study Finds

California, Oregon Break With CDC Guidance On COVID-19 Isolation Rules

CDC Guidance Encourages Physicians To Consider More PFAS Blood Testing