Infectious Disease Alert articles from August 2003

Infectious Disease Alert archives from August 2003

EIA test for Aspergillus galactomannan officially here--but how good is it?(Abstracts & Commentary)
August 1, 2003... Synopsis: The Platelia Aspergillus EIA for detecting Aspergillus galactomannan in blood has been recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the United States. ********** IN MAY, THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION...

Treatment of early Lyme disease--more is not better.(Abstract & Commentary)
August 1, 2003... Synopsis: Neither adding a single dose of ceftriaxone to a 10-day course of doxycycline nor extending the duration of doxycycline therapy to 20 days is better than a straight forward 10-day course of oral doxycycline in the treatment of...

Amoeba-associated bacteria: novel causes of ventilator-associated pneumonia?(Abstract & Commentary)
August 1, 2003... Source: Wormser GP, et al. Duration of therapy for early Lyme Disease. Ann Intern Med. 2003;138:697-704. Synopsis: Organisms that may only be isolated by using coculture with amoeba and that are present in hospital water supplies may be...

PZA--the most likely culprit.(Abstract & Commentary)(pyrazinamide and adverse drug events)
August 1, 2003... Synopsis: Pyrazinamide was the most frequent cause of drug-related adverse events, especially hepatitis, among patients with tuberculosis receiving first-line drugs. ********** YEE AND COLLEAGUES IN MONTREAL REVIEWED THE incidence of...

Monkey fever--Kyasanur Forest disease.(Abstract & Commentary)(disease transmission and symptoms)
August 1, 2003... Synopsis: Kyasanur Forest Disease, also known as "monkey fever," is a cause of hemorrhagic fever with late CNS manifestations in a geographically delimited area of India. ********** INDIAN HEALTH OFFICIALS FROM KARNATAKA STATE...

Japanese encephalitis.(Abstract & Commentary)
August 1, 2003... Synopsis: Guangdong province in China, having brought SARS under control, is now facing its seasonal epidemic of Japanese encephalitis. ********** WHILE JUST NOW RECOVERING FROM SARS, THE Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Health on...

Viruses down under.(Abstract & Commentary)(development and transmission of RNA viruses)
August 1, 2003... Synopsis: Ross River and Barmah viruses are causes of febrile illness often associated with severe joint symptoms, which may persist for months. ********** WARNINGS WERE SENT TO TOURISTS TO THE NEW South Wales Far North Coast of...

Aspiration pneumonia: where have all the anaerobes gone?(Abstract & Commentary)
August 1, 2003... Synopsis: Anaerobes were not found to play an important role in the etiology of pneumonia in nursing home residents with an increased risk of aspiration. ********** EL-SOLH AND COLLEAGUES IN BUFFALO OBTAINED respiratory specimens by...

CME question.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2003... Please review the text, answer the following questions, check your answers against the key, and then review the materials again regarding any questions answered incorrectly. To receive credit for this activity, you must return a CE/CME...

An oral agent for smallpox?(Updates)(Author Abstract)
August 1, 2003... CIDOFOVIR (CDV), WHICH WAS licensed in the United States in 1996 for the treatment of cytomegalovirus retinitis, has been used successfully in a number of other viral infections, including those due to drug-resistant herpes simplex,...

Neonatal legionella from home water birth.(Updates)(Author Abstract)
August 1, 2003... WATER BIRTHS HAVE BECOME increasingly popular in Europe and the United States but still are uncommon in Japan, where an apparently healthy baby girl died unexpectedly 8 days after delivery in a home water bath system. The mother had no problems...

Waiting in the wings?(Updates)(myobacteria infection from tattooing)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2003... SPEAKING OF CUTANEOUS MAC infection resulting from a home spa, Wolf and Wolf report a case of cutaneous atypical mycobacteria infection from a butterfly tattoo. Although tattooing is a well-recognized risk for transmission of several key...

Diagnostic testing for SARS.(Updates )(severe acute respiratory syndrome)
August 1, 2003... AS OF JUNE 2, The Weekly Epimiological Record is reporting a cumulative total of 8384 probable cases of SARS and 770 deaths from 29 countries. The 27 new deaths were reported from China and Hong Kong. Although several laboratories are working...

Nasally administered flu vaccine comes to United States.(various articles on drug safety)
August 1, 2003... The FDA has approved the first nasally administered flu vaccine to be marketed in this country. Medimmune's "FluMist" is also the first influenza vaccine to use live virus. This year's version of the vaccine contains 3 attenuated viruses...

Increase in blood glucose concentration during antihypertensive treatment as a predictor of myocardial infarction.(Author Abstract)
August 1, 2003... RELEASE OF THE ALLHAT TRIAL, THE largest antihypertensive trial ever performed, has suggested that chlorthalidone, amlodipine, and lisinopril all provide favorable cardiovascular risk reduction. Additionally, this trial demonstrated that...

Adverse drug events in ambulatory care.(Author Abstract)
August 1, 2003... ADVERSE EVENTS (AE) FROM MEDICATIONS have been well studied among hospital inpatients. It has been reported that as many as 6.5% of hospitalized patients have one or more AE, of which more than one-fourth are considered preventable. AE in the...

Prevention of hip fracture by external hip protectors.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2003... IN THE YEAR FOLLOWING A HIP FRACTURE (HIP) as many as one-third of persons die, and an equal number suffer inability to walk, or severe disability. One of the interventions intended to reduce HIP is use of external hip protectors (EHP),...

Rapid MRI vs radiographs for patients with low back pain.(Author Abstract)
August 1, 2003... THE ROLE OR RADIOLOGIC EVALUATION for acute low back pain (LBP) has been plagued with uncertainty, since as many as one-third of asymptomatic persons examined by MRI have signs consistent with herniated disk, and a substantially greater number...

Effectiveness of anticholinergic drugs compared with placebo in the treatment of overactive bladder.(Author Abstract)
August 1, 2003... OVERACTIVE BLADDER (OAB) COMPRISES a syndrome that may include urgency, urge incontinence, frequency and/or nocturia. Incontinence troubles as many as one-third of all overactive bladder patients, but even symptoms of frequency or nocturia may...

A randomized trial of a low carbohydrate diet for obesity.(Author Abstract)
August 1, 2003... AT THE CURRENT TIME IN AMERICA, almost half of women and a substantial minority of men (30%) are dieting to lose weight. Unfortunately, diet interventions have had surprisingly little favorable effect upon the weight of the nation, as manifest...