Browse Infectious Disease Alert Articles by Topic

Antiviral Therapy Improves Outcomes in Immunocompromised but Not Immunocompetent HSV Meningitis Patients

SYNOPSIS: A retrospective, observational, single-center study found immunocompromised patients are at increased risk for neurologic sequelae from HSV meningitis and likely benefit from antiviral therapy. There is no benefit to antiviral therapy in immunocompetent individuals.

Reactive Hemophagocytic Syndrome in Adults

Patients with HPS were more likely to be immunosuppressed.

Peramivir for Treatment of Influenza

Peramivir (RapivabTM) was recently approved by the FDA for treating acute uncomplicated influenza.

The Next Influenza Pandemic: Not If, but When

Avian influenza has created an economic disaster in parts of Asia. While the number of associated identified human infections has, to date, not reached 100 cases, the possibility of a public health disaster looms since the outbreak of avian influenza may be setting the stage for the next human influenza pandemic.

S. aureus: The Nose Knows

Samples obtained by swabbing both nares of almost 10,000 individuals > 1 year of age in the US National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) in 2001-2002 were cultured on mannitol salt agar. S. aureus was identified in 32.4% of subjects and 0.8% were colonized with methicillin resistant S. aureus(MRSA).

Update On Moxifloxacin (Avelox): Potential Interaction with Warfarin and Cardiac Rhythm Safety

Adverse drug events (ADES) are unwanted consequences of drug therapy and have important implications for each patient, the treating physician, and the institution itself. When assessing adverse effects, prescribing healthcare workers should pay particular attention to ADEs that interrupt the patients therapeutic regimen and hence increase the patients length of stay in the hospital.

Abacavir/Tenofovir- and Didanosine/Tenofovir-Regimens

The first article reports the results of an industry-sponsored clinical trial comparing TDF/ABC/3TC vs EFV/ABC/3TC in treatment-naïve patients. Three hundred forty patients were randomized. Baseline characteristics including CD4 count and HIV RNA level were similar between the arms.

An Upgraded Blood Test That Identifies Tuberculous Infection

Tuberculin skin testing is a crude procedure, fraught with potential error at every step, from application to interpretation, and requires 2 visits to a health care provider. Its use has persisted, nonetheless, because it remained, until recently, the only means of detection of latent infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

That Which Bends Up

More than 5000 people in the Comoros Islands, off the eastern coast of Africa and near Madagascar, became ill with high fever and severe joint paints in the first months of 2005.

Clinical Briefs in Primary Care supplement