[Media Watch] Criminalising transmission of infections
In their new work Criminalising Contagion: Legal and Ethical Challenges of Disease Transmission and the Criminal Law, Catherine Stanton and Hannah Quirk reiterate the existing orthodoxy that criminalising contagion is bad. In a nutshell, doing so makes ill people's lives more onerous, and stigmatises illness, deterring those who suspect they might be afflicted, from getting diagnosed and thereupon treatment, and incentivising them to continue, officially at least, as uninfected. Their officially uninfected status thus frees them from the burdens of disclosure and liabilities that might attach to their desired actions, were...
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: George Mawhinney Tags: Media Watch Source Type: research
[Media Watch] Voices on antimicrobial resistance
Suddenly, it seems, the media is full of stories about antibiotic resistance. Val McDermid's critically acclaimed radio play Resistance and Dominic Rees-Roberts and Paul Cooke's short film Catch have shown how rich our potential post-antibiotic future is as a topic for dystopian fiction. Yet this type of fiction is far better at highlighting the problem than at showing how it arose, let alone where solutions might come from. For that, we need to turn to documentary. Michael Graziano's hard-hitting documentary, also called Resistance, presents the truth about antibiotic resistance in the early 21st century in an engaging an...
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Clare Sansom Tags: Media Watch Source Type: research
[Newsdesk] Research brief
Meet the early hominin that gave us genital herpes: Paranthropus boisei, a heavy-set, dish-faced, bipedal hominid. Herpes simplex virus (HSV) 2, which causes genital herpes, jumped back to hominins from early chimpanzees between 1 ·4 million and 3 million years ago. Using Bayesian modelling of HSV data and information about the climate in ancient Africa, UK researchers identified P boisei as the hominin most likely to have been in contact with ancestral chimps. From there, the virus made its way to our ancestor, Homo erectus . (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Dara Mohammadi Tags: Newsdesk Source Type: research
[Newsdesk] Infectious disease surveillance update
As of Oct 7, the number of people who have died in the cholera epidemic that started in April 2017, in Yemen, has risen to 2151. A total of 800 626 cases have been reported across 22 of the 23 provinces in Yemen. Most of the reported deaths have been from the northern province of Hajjah. (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Ruth Zwizwai Tags: Newsdesk Source Type: research
[Newsdesk] Antibiotic development pipeline slows to a trickle
New antibiotics are needed as part of the global effort to tackle antimicrobial resistance, but WHO warns that few are in development. Talha Burki reports. (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Talha Burki Tags: Newsdesk Source Type: research
[Newsdesk] International Forum on Gonococcal Infections and Resistance
Held in Shenzhen, China (Sept 18 –19), the forum was convened to discuss the major challenges in Neisseria gonorrhoeae infection. Marco De Ambrogi reports. (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Marco De Ambrogi Tags: Newsdesk Source Type: research
[Newsdesk] HIV and antenatal care in Sri Lanka: a global health success
Sri Lanka's dedication to maternal and antenatal health is helping it to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Sophie Cousins reports. (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Sophie Cousins Tags: Newsdesk Source Type: research
[Correspondence] WHO delays guinea-worm disease eradication to 2020: are dogs the sole culprits?
WHO's 2007 global plan1 targeted the eradication of guinea-worm disease by 2015. This objective was not met and the culprits have, apparently, been identified. In addition to the political instability that prevails in many areas of Africa, which prevents the applicability of control strategies for disease control, dogs have been considered the most serious obstacle to the eradication because of the number of infected dogs that reside in Chad, Ethiopia, and Mali.2 As a result, WHO has reconsidered the objectives set out in the 2007 global plan, delaying the eradication of guinea-worm disease to 2018 for Mali and South Sudan...
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: M Teresa Gal án-Puchades Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Post-migration follow-up of migrants at risk of tuberculosis
In recent Correspondence about the screening and treatment of latent tuberculosis infection in migrants who had moved from countries with a high tuberculosis burden to low-burden countries, Kayvan Bozorgmehr1 reported that asylum seekers in Germany from Somalia and Iraq had very different prevalences of latent infection. He commented that “Many studies on effectiveness of tuberculosis screening treat migrants as homogenous, neglecting that this population is socially constructed and highly heterogeneous”, citing our study2 as one of the examples. (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Peter J White, Ibrahim Abubakar, Robert W Aldridge, Andrew C Hayward Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Itraconazole and antiretroviral therapy: strategies for empirical dosing – Author's reply
We thank Ilan S Schwartz and Sean Wasserman for their interest in our paper on the management of HIV-associated endemic mycoses.1 Schwartz and Wasserman rightly express concern regarding the known drug –drug interaction between itraconazole and non-nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) efavirenz and nevirapine, which results in considerable reductions in plasma itraconazole concentrations following co-administration. NNRTIs are often included in standardised first-line antiretrovi ral therapy regimens in developing countries, and co-administration with itraconazole is commonly required during the consolida...
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Thuy Le, Antoine Adenis, Andrew Limper, Thomas Harrison Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Itraconazole and antiretroviral therapy: strategies for empirical dosing
In their Review in, Andrew H Limper and colleagues1 highlight the importance of itraconazole for the management of HIV-associated endemic mycoses. Itraconazole is both a substrate and a potent inhibitor of cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4) and inhibits the membrane transporter P-glycoprotein, resulting in considerable drug –drug interactions with antiretrovirals.2 The reduction of itraconazole exposure when co-administered with the non-nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) efavirenz and nevirapine, which are widely-used in developing countries, is particularly concerning. (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Ilan S Schwartz, Sean Wasserman Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Proposed treatment strategies for non-gonococcal urethritis
I read with great interest the Comment by J ørgen S Jensen1 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases about Mycoplasma genitalium infections. As the author notes, the increase in macrolide and fluoroquinolone-resistant M genitalium makes the treatment of M genitalium infections difficult. Under these conditions, new treatment strategies for non-gono coccal urethritis in men are needed. In clinical practice, non-gonococcal urethritis is treated with drugs highly active against Chlamydia trachomatis, because it causes approximately 50% of non-gonococcal urethritis. (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Takashi Deguchi Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Hospital antimicrobial stewardship: the way forward – Authors' reply
Discussion section, we completely agree that the possibility of uncontrolled studies having observed effects as a result of an underlying secular trend cannot be ignored, and we also recommended the use of controll ed interventional designs for future studies. However, we would like to underline that, although some guidance is available on how to design interventions on antimicrobial stewardship,2 specific recommendations about how to select study designs and overcome major bias in assessing antibiotic steward ship programmes (eg, definitions of outcomes or analytical methods) are missing or under development. (Source: The...
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Evelina Tacconelli, Beryl Primrose Gladstone Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Hospital antimicrobial stewardship: the way forward
In resource-limited environments, deciding where and how investments should be made to reduce bacterial resistance is challenging. (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: C éline Pulcini, Peter Collignon Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
[Correspondence] Hospital antimicrobial stewardship: the way forward
We read David Baur and colleagues' systematic review1 of the effect of antimicrobial stewardship programmes on antibiotic resistance and Clostridium difficile infection, and the accompanying Comment,2 with great interest. (Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases)
Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases - October 25, 2017 Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Charis A Marwick, Bruce Guthrie, Peter G Davey Tags: Correspondence Source Type: research
