Infectious Diseases

CDC's Dr. Phoebe Thorpe speaks with Dr. Sherif Zaki about the important work being done to further reduce the risk of unusual transplant-associated infections.

Ensuring that organs are safe requires:

• Involvement by many disciplines including: pathologists, epidemiologists, clinicians, and others
• Global collaboration between federal and state agencies as well as academic institutions
• Continued focus on improving regulations and screening procedures

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Preschool children who experience repeated episodes of severe lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) often present with symptoms like wheezing and difficulty breathing. A new study looked at whether the use of the common antibiotic, azithromycin, would help prevent progression of the illness, if given early enough in the episode.

Researchers from Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine, studied more than 600 children, ranging from ages one to six years old, with a history of repeated episodes of severe respiratory illness. Children were randomly assigned to either receive azithromycin or a placebo early in these episodes.

They found that children in the antibiotic group experienced a lower risk of progressing to severe LRTI than the placebo group.

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Global health security is the protection of the health of people and societies worldwide. With diseases a plane ride or border crossing away, the importance of global health security has never been clearer. Patterns of global travel and trade pose greater opportunities for infectious diseases to emerge and spread nearly anywhere within 24 hours. The Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which has infected more than 28,000 people across 10 countries and has caused more than 11,200 deaths, highlights the importance of ensuring that every country is prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to outbreaks and emerging health threats.

In this session of Public Health Grand Rounds from the CDC, experts discuss how CDC, other U.S. government agencies, and global partners are working to promote global health security as an international priority and accelerate progress toward a world safe and secure from epidemics of infectious disease.

For more details on this Grand Rounds session and its participants, click here.

Host: Matt Birnholz, MD

Joining host Dr. Matt Birnholz is Sarah Marchal Murray, Chief Operating Officer at The END Fund, a private philanthropic initiative dedicated to controlling and eliminating neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Over 1.4 billion people globally are affected by one or more of the most common NTDs, including 875 million children. The END Fund focuses on tackling the five most prevalent NTDs: intestinal worms,schistosomiasis,lymphatic filariasis,trachoma, and river blindness.

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In the United States, seasonal influenza epidemics are responsible for an estimated 226,000 hospitalizations and between 3,000 and 49,000 deaths each year. Pneumonia, the leading infectious cause of hospitalization and death in the United States, is a serious complication of influenza. A new study examined whether getting a flu shot can help reduce hospitalizations due to influenza pneumonia.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University Medical Center evaluated more than 2,700 patients from January 2010 to June 2012. All patients had pneumonia and were admitted to the hospital from the emergency department. Overall, about six percent of patients had pneumonia due to influenza.

Researchers estimated that the patients who received influenza vaccine had a 57 percent less chance of getting hospitalized with influenza-pneumonia than those patients who were not vaccinated.

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JAMA Report videos provided pursuant to license. ©2015 American Medical Association, publisher of JAMA® and The JAMA Network® journals.

Host: Brian P. McDonough, MD, FAAFP

Dr. Brian McDonough welcomes Dr. Gregory Weinstein, Professor and Vice Chair and the Director of the Division of Head and Neck Surgery. He is the Co-Director of The Center for Head and Neck Cancer in The Department of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The two discuss a dramatic rise in HPV-related cancers over the past decade, and what clinicians need to be aware of in assessing their patients for these indidious diseases.

Host: Matt Birnholz, MD

Dr. Matt Birnholz welcomes Patrick Higgins, President and Chief Operating Officer of Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, to discuss his research team's inspiring journey toward developing a cure for Hepatitis C. Following this success, Tekmira aims to accelerate the pace of research and development for a novel Hepatitis B drug.

Guest: Olufunmilayo (Funmi) Olopade, MD, FACP

Host: Maurice Pickard, MD

Host Dr. Maurice Pickard welcomes Olufunmilayo (Funmi) Olopade, MD, FACP, Walter L. Palmer Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine & Human Genetics, Associate Dean for Global Health, and Director of Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics at the University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, IL. Dr. Olopade reviews the latest information and best practices in establishing an interdisciplinary program in improving chronic disease treatment worldwide. She reviews challenges and progress toward providing better education, research and training, and service infrastructures addressing global health issues within the United States and around the world.

Host: John Russell, MD

A cure for HIV? Two men, known in medical journals as the Berlin Patients, were cured of HIV in distinct yet related ways. The two patients’ disparate cures came twelve years apart, but Nathalia Holt, an award-winning scientist at the forefront of HIV research, connects the molecular dots of these cases for the first time. Her book, CURED: How The Berlin Patients Defeated HIV and Forever Changed Medical Science, explores this new field of investigation and paradign shift in HIV treatment inspired by the Berlin Patients. Dr. John Russell hosts.

Host: Matt Birnholz, MD

Antibiotic stewardship, or the responsible prescribing habits of antibiotics, is on the decline in the U.S, and the spread of multidrug resistant bacterial infections through communities has already begun to be observed. Dr. Steven Brown, staff physician at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis, MO and Medical Director of the Lung Injury Center, likens antibiotic prescription expectations by patients to that of gameshow participants, where everyone presumes to take home a "prize" of some kind by the end of the encounter. How can clinicians counteract this trend in antibiotic prescription habits, and what are the risks of ignoring this mandate for better stewardship?