Editors in Conversation

Despite the many advances in diagnostic testing for infectious diseases, detection of Coccidoides infections continues to rely on serologic assessment for anti-fungal antibodies, and what is perhaps more astonishing is that the serologic methods we use today, such as complement fixation and immunodiffusion, were first developed about a century ago. These assays are technically challenging to maintain and perform, and as a result few labs offer this testing, and even if performed on-site, testing can take up to 3 days complete, so there is definitely room for improvement. So today, we are talking about a study that aimed to modernize and improve our current options and diagnostic approach for Valley Fever, using a simpler and definitely faster lateral flow immunoassay. And as an added bonus, the study was not homo sapien-centric.

• Dr. Francisca Grill, Chief Scientific Officer at Cactus Bio
• Dr. Tom Grys, Associate Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, and co-Director of the Clinical Microbiology laboratory at Mayo Clinic in Arizona

• Development of a rapid lateral flow assay for detection of anti-coccidioidal antibodies

This episode of Editors in Conversation is brought to you by the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and hosted by JCM Editor in Chief, Alex McAdam and Dr. Elli Theel. JCM is available at https://jcm.asm.org and on https://twitter.com/JClinMicro.

Visit journals.asm.org/journal/jcm to read articles and/or submit a manuscript.

Follow JCM on Twitter via @JClinMicro

Climate change is possibly the major threat that planet earth is experiencing in this century with potential catastrophic consequences. As the planet warms, the change in weather patterns is affecting the microbial ecology in such a manner that humans are facing new health threats including emerging diseases and facing species of organisms that are more likely to survive these new climatic conditions and resist clinically useful antimicrobials.

• The global threat of global warming.
• Climate change and change sin microbial ecology.
• The consequences of climate change and emergence of new infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance patterns.

• Arturo Casadeval MD, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Alfred & Jill Sommer Professor and Chair Department of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Editor in Chief of mBio, Member of the National Academy of Sciences

Fungi that are resistant to antifungal drugs have been very much in the news and even the subject of the hugely popular television program, The Last of Us. We talk with two experts in mycology and fungal susceptibility testing about the recent descriptions of terbinafine-resistant dermatophytes in the United States.

Some of the questions we will address include: • What are the manifestations of infections caused by terbinafine-resistant dermatophytes? • What species, including novel species, of dermatophytes are more commonly resistant to terbinafine? • How common is terbinafine resistance in dermatophytes in the U.S.?

Guests:

- Dr. Shawn Lockhart - Senior Advisor at the Centers for Disease Control

- Dr. Nathan Wiederhold - Director of the Fungus Testing Laboratory and a Professor at UT Health San Antonio.

This episode of Editors in Conversation is brought to you by the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and hosted by JCM Editor in Chief, Alex McAdam and Dr. Elli Theel. Editors in conversation is supported by the American Society for Microbiology, which publishes JCM. If you are a member of ASM, you can get up to 50% off the publication fees when you publish in JCM or any of the ASM journals.

Visit https://journals.asm.org/journal/jcm to read articles and/or submit a manuscript.

Follow EIC, Alex McAdam on twitter for JCM updates via https://twitter.com/JClinMicro and co-host, Elli Theel at https://twitter.com/ETheelPhD.

Subscribe to the podcast at https://asm.org/eic

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to change the way we practice medicine and public health. The tools and AI approaches can substantially impact a broad range of fields from the manner we approach patient care to strategies to discover new antimicrobials, track pandemics and deploy public health measures. AAC recently published a commentary on the impact of AI in infectious diseases and we have a conversation with the lead author of the manuscript and a expert guest who is applying these concepts in real time.

• Basic concepts of AI and different applications.
• How AI can affect the practice of infectious diseases and antimicrobial research.
• Specific examples in which AI may have a transformative effect in the future.

• Lilian Abbo, MD MBA. Associate CMO Infectious Diseases, Professor of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Jackson Health System, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami Transplant Institute
• Masayuki Nigo, MD, MSc. Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine, Houston Methodist Hospital, Section of Transplant Infectious Diseases.

This episode is brought to you by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal available at aac.asm.org. If you plan to publish in AAC, ASM Members get up to 50% off publishing fees. Visit asm.org/membership to sign up.

Visit journals.asm.org/journal/aac to browse issues and/or submit a manuscript.

Dr. Elli Theel and Dr. Alex McAdam discuss recent viral outbreaks with expert virologists. Recorded before a live audience at ASM Microbe 2023.

• What are the recent epidemiologic and diagnostic findings with Mpox?
• What are the reservoirs for influenza A H5N1 and how is it transmitted to humans?
• Why was there such a large number of cases of human metapneumovirus this past respiratory virus season?

• Dr. Ben Pinsky, Director of the Clinical Virology laboratory and Professor of Pathology and Medicine at Stanford Health Care and the Stanford University School of Medicine
• Dr. Ryan Relich, Director of Clinical Microbiology and the Special Pathogens Unit laboratory at IU Health and Eskenazi Health and an Associate Professor of Clinical Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine

This episode of Editors in Conversation is brought to you by the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and hosted by JCM Editor in Chief, Alex McAdam and Dr. Elli Theel. JCM is available at https://jcm.asm.org and on https://twitter.com/JClinMicro.

Visit journals.asm.org/journal/jcm to read articles and/or submit a manuscript.

Follow JCM on Twitter via @JClinMicro

In response to the global burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the critical role antimicrobial stewardship plays in optimizing antibiotic use and reducing the subsequent emergence of AMR, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy is excited to add a new section to the journal focused on antimicrobial stewardship studies. Combatting the devastating burden of AMR requires novel, multipronged approaches from clinicians and scientists alike. Launching this new section is an important step in disseminating cutting-edge research that will have notable implications in the global fight against antimicrobial-resistant pathogens.

• The role of antimicrobial stewardship in preventing emerging of resistance.
• The types of high-quality manuscripts that AAC is seeking in this area.
• Encourage excellence in antimicrobial stewardship research.

• Pranita Tamma, MD MPH, Associate Professor of Pediatrics Director, Pediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MA, Editor AAC.
• Ryan Shields PharmD, MS. Associate Professor of Medicine, Co-Director, Antibiotic Management Program, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. Editor AAC.

This episode is brought to you by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal available at aac.asm.org. If you plan to publish in AAC, ASM Members get up to 50% off publishing fees. Visit asm.org/membership to sign up.

Visit journals.asm.org/journal/aac to browse issues and/or submit a manuscript.

The combination of aztreonam with ceftazidime-avibactam is increasingly used for treatment of antimicrobial-resistant Gram-negative bacilli. Clinical laboratories are asked to perform susceptibility testing using this combination, but many laboratory directors have been unsure how to approach this. Today, we'll discuss a recent paper in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology in which the investigators evaluated a promising method for testing this combination of two antimicrobials and a beta-lactamase inhibitor. We will also discuss the rational for combining these agents, as well as what lab directors should consider before validating and offering this susceptibility testing.

• Dr. Trish Simner - Director of the Medical Bacteriology and Infectious Disease Sequencing Laboratories, Johns Hopkins Hospital
• Dr. Romney Humphries - Director of the Division of Laboratory Medicine and the Medical Director of the Microbiology Laboratory at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

• Multicenter Evaluation of an MIC-Based Aztreonam and Ceftazidime-Avibactam Broth Disk Elution Test

This episode of Editors in Conversation is brought to you by the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and hosted by JCM Editor in Chief, Alex McAdam and Dr. Elli Theel. JCM is available at https://jcm.asm.org and on https://twitter.com/JClinMicro.

Visit journals.asm.org/journal/jcm to read articles and/or submit a manuscript.

Follow JCM on Twitter via @JClinMicro

Recorded at ASM Microbe 2023, Cesar has a conversation with Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi about the role of minority women in science and discovery, the journey of Hispanic women in science and the current challenges posed by society to deliver science and global health equity.

• Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi - Sr. Associate Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, Distinguished Professor of Biology at Baylor University, Waco

This episode is brought to you by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal available at aac.asm.org. If you plan to publish in AAC, ASM Members get up to 50% off publishing fees. Visit asm.org/membership to sign up.

Visit journals.asm.org/journal/aac to browse issues and/or submit a manuscript.

As many of you are likely aware, May is recognized as Women's Health Care Month by the National Cervical Cancer Coalition, and this year, the CDC has identified the week of May 14th as National Women's Health Week. So, what better way to recognize these national events on the podcast than to talk about diagnostics for a number of extremely common and uniquely female issues – of course, I'm talking about infectious causes of vaginitis and vaginosis. Classically, diagnosis of these infections has been done at the point-of-care using wet mount microscopy and assessment for various clinical criteria, all approaches associated with some interpretive subjectivity, and let's say imperfect performance characteristics. As a result, molecular solutions for detection of the various pathogens associated with vaginitis and vaginosis are now increasingly available for use in clinical laboratories, and also at the point-of-care, and as is the post-COVID trend, a number of these assays, including the one we are going to discuss today, can be performed on both clinician and patient self-collected samples

• Dr. Rebecca Lillis - Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at Louisiana State University Health Science Center and the Medical Director of the LSU-CrescentCare Sexual Health Center in New Orleans.
• Dr. Barbara Van Der Pol - Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham

• Clinical Evaluation of a New Molecular Test for the Detection of Organisms Causing Vaginitis and Vaginosis

This episode of Editors in Conversation is brought to you by the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and hosted by JCM Editor in Chief, Alex McAdam and Dr. Elli Theel. JCM is available at https://jcm.asm.org and on https://twitter.com/JClinMicro.

Visit journals.asm.org/journal/jcm to read articles and/or submit a manuscript.

Follow JCM on Twitter via @JClinMicro

As the number of immunocompromised patients rise in our hospitals, the presentation of severe infections caused by HSV and CMV are rising. Most importantly, lack of response and documented resistance are becoming more frequently observed.

• The clinical problems caused by resistant HSV and CMV infections.
• Mechanisms of resistance in these organisms.
• Insights into novel therapeutic approaches to treat resistant gonococcal infections.

• Christine M. Johnston, MD, MPH - Associate Professor Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Adjunct Associate Professor, Virology Division, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
• Roy Chemaly, MD, MPH - Professor of Medicine, Chief Infection Control Officer, Director, Clinical Virology Research, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX.

This episode is brought to you by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal available at aac.asm.org. If you plan to publish in AAC, ASM Members get up to 50% off publishing fees. Visit asm.org/membership to sign up.

Visit journals.asm.org/journal/aac to browse issues and/or submit a manuscript.