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In a new research paper published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Thomas E. Finucane, MD, of the Johns Hopkins Geriatrics Center at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, suggests that prescribing antibiotics for urinary tract infections (UTIs) may often be avoided among older adults.

Findings from a study that looked at susceptibility trends of Staphylococcus aureus in U.S. hospital patients showed that key antibiotics used to treat the bacteria became more active over the course of the study, a rare occurrence. Researchers at JMI Laboratories evaluated susceptibility trends of antibiotics from 2009 to 2015 by testing clinical isolates from medical centers across the U.S. The research is presented on June 4th at the ASM Microbe conference in New Orleans.

The devastating effects of Zika virus on the brain of the developing fetus during infection in pregnancy have led to intensive research to understand the routes of Zika virus transmission and how the virus travels to and infects the fetus. What researchers have learned about how Zika virus impacts pregnancy and neonatal outcomes and the promise of new therapeutic interventions are presented in a comprehensive review article published in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (JICR) from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

Competing priorities, life-and-death situations and a vast quantity of unknown variables are the hallmarks of the emergency department (ED), and compliance with infection prevention and control (IPC) principles and practices can be challenging. Katherine West, BSN, MSEd, CIC, points to the directive from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) -- CPL 02-02.069 -- that indicates that the delivery of healthcare should not be delayed. "Trauma response is more important than infection control compliance, and even OSHA recognizes that fact," West says. "We have a duty to meet the patient care needs."

With the U.S. healthcare reform mandate for increasing transparency and improved quality, the need for infection prevention and control in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) is becoming more critical than ever before for the more than 3 million Americans receiving geriatric care in U.S. annually. Consider these facts regarding infection in long-term care: • An estimated 1.6 million to 3.8 million infections occur in long-term care facilities each year. • More than 1.5 million people live in 16,000 nursing homes in the United States. Estimates suggest infections could result in as many as 380,000 deaths among those residents each year.  • The nursing home population is expected to increase to about 5.3 million people by 2030.

Policies relating to newly emerging and highly infectious diseases in outpatient healthcare settings within the context of infection prevention and control are highly variable, according to public health experts, leaving many gaps in patient protection from healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). For example, only a minority of outpatient facilities are certified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and few are licensed by states or maintain accreditation status. As a result, many of these facilities are opened and operated without being held to minimum safety standards for infection control or other aspects of patient care, potentially putting patients at risk. In an October 2015 document, Outpatient Settings Policy Options for Improving Infection Prevention, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) outlined four key elements for states and their supporting HAI multidisciplinary advisory groups who are interested in more effective and proactive oversight of out-patient facilities: facility licensing/accreditation requirements; provider-level training, licensing and certification; reporting requirements; and establishment and effective application of investigation authorities.

The intensive care unit patient is susceptible to a number of common healthcare-acquired infections, including ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), catheter-related bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), and Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs), among others. There are numerous predisposing factors to take into consideration, say Dhillon, et al., who add, "Critically ill patients in the ICU are more likely to have invasive catheters, devices, or undergo surgical treatments that disrupt the skin barrier. Burn victims also develop HAIs as a result of the physical barrier disruption. The ability to clear infections may further be reduced by an underlying chronic diseases, thus increasing the risk of HAI. Other significant risk factors include urinary catheter >10 days, ICU confinement >3 days, presence of intracranial pressure monitor/arterial line/central venous catheter, and shock."

The sterile processing department (SPD) can be one of the more challenging environments in which to uphold infection prevention and control principles. As an example, the decontamination area of the SPD can pose a significant threat to its technicians "because of the numerous and unknown microorganisms that pass through," confirms Nancy Chobin, RN, AAS, ACSP, CSPM, a sterile processing educator and consultant. "In addition, there is the potential for a sharps injury due to sharps that are handled in this area as well such a towel clips, etc.," she says.

The CDC Foundation explains that public health is “the science of protecting and improving the health of families and communities through promotion of healthy lifestyles, research for disease and injury prevention and detection and control of infectious diseases.” It adds that “Public health professionals try to prevent problems from happening or recurring through implementing educational programs, recommending policies, administering services and conducting research – in contrast to clinical professionals like doctors and nurses, who focus primarily on treating individuals after they become sick or injured. Public health also works to limit health disparities. A large part of public health is promoting healthcare equity, quality and accessibility.”

Hospital food service infection control experts have a lot on their plates, as it were, when it comes to ensuring patients’ well-being. That responsibility has not let up in 2016; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) keeps pushing medical institutions to offer healthier fare – think fresh, not prepackaged, salads; Chipotle’s produce-linked food poisoning outbreak lingers in recent memory; and the Zika virus’s entrance into the United States raises questions about its impact on areas including food safety. Each of these issues should reinforce to hospital food infection control experts the need to stay mindful of industry best practices. Doing so will continue to help protect patients, says Marisa Pinchas, MPH, CIC, the infection preventionist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Construction or renovation projects in the healthcare environment can pose moderate to significant risks of particulate-borne disease trans-mission, so experts emphasize the need for control measures as part of a risk-mitigation plan.

While not every instance of healthcare-associated infection (HAI) can be pinned on staff hygiene, too many occurrences can be attributed to the very people who are supposed to protect patients. And that is why the reality of insufficient attention to handwashing, PPE donning and doffing, and other areas of infection prevention, remains so baffling.  The big question is “why” – why do some staff cut corners when they well know the consequences of not adhering to standard processes for basic hand hygiene and activities such as PPE donning/doffing? The answers vary but often boil down to one simple reality: human nature. People get in a hurry and take the chance that no one is watching them, says Mary Lou Love, MSN, RN, the veteran director of infection control for Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg, Texas. For starters, people generally adhere to requirements for a while and then fall back into their old ways. “I think, like anything else, you start off, then get to the point that it is working, and then a couple of months go by,” Love explains. Since infection control – which has limited resources – tends to oversee compliance monitoring on a regular basis people “go back to their habits” without constant enforcement, Love says.

Outbreaks of infectious diseases, caused by harmful pathogens, can be traced back centuries as the cause of significant morbidity and mor-tality in humans. The previous century saw two of medicine’s biggest achievements: the introduction of vaccinations to prevent infections and the use of antibiotics to cure infections when they do occur. Preventing and curing infections remain key goals of medicine in providing optimal health for a population. But growing antibiotic resistance and community-acquired infections are on the rise. It’s important to take a closer look at these growing trends.

The World Health Organization WHO is currently warning of an antibiotics crisis. The fear is that we are moving into a post-antibiotic era, during which simple bacterial infections would no longer be treatable. According to WHO forecasts, antibiotic-resistant pathogens could become the most frequent cause of unnatural deaths within just a few years. This dramatic threat to public health is due to the rapid evolution of resistance to antibiotics, which continues to reduce the spectrum of effective antibacterial drugs. We urgently need new treatments. In addition to developing new antibiotic drugs, a key strategy is to boost the effectiveness of existing antibiotics by new therapeutic approaches.

For the purposes of this report, ICT conducted an online survey in which several hundred infection preventionists shared their insights on key issues such as workload, present and future challenges, as well as program needs and areas for improvement. When we asked respondents how they felt about the future of their profession overall, 56 percent said they were excited and optimistic about what can be accomplished, 28 percent said they were feeling neutral and withholding judgment for now, and 16 percent said they felt cautious and/or pessimistic in the face of continued change within the profession and healthcare in general. Eighty-five percent of surveyed IPs say they are confident in their compe-tency as an infection preventionist, while 5 percent were not and 10 percent were unsure. And in terms of enjoying their work, 91 percent of IPs said they were happy in their jobs, while 4 percent said they did not relish their tasks and 6 percent were ambivalent.

When a patient is prescribed the wrong antibiotic to treat a bacterial infection, it's not necessarily the physician who is at fault. The current antibiotic assay -- standardized in 1961 by the World Health Organization and used worldwide -- is potentially flawed. So says UC Santa Barbara biologist Michael Mahan, whose lab has developed a new antimicrobial susceptibility test that could transform the way antibiotics are developed, tested and prescribed.

The bacteria in a child’s gut appears to be influenced as early as its first year by ethnicity and breastfeeding, according to a new study from McMaster University. And while stable gut bacteria, called microbiota, may not be established until one to three years after birth, the infant gut bacteria seems to be an important indicator of immune function, nutrient metabolism and could offer protection from pathogens. The study was recently published in Genome Medicine.

Before Ebola virus ever struck West Africa, locals were already on the lookout for a deadly pathogen: Lassa virus. With thousands dying from Lassa every year-and the potential for the virus to cause even larger outbreaks-researchers are committed to designing a vaccine to stop it. Now, a team led by staff scientist Kathryn Hastie and professor Erica Ollmann Saphire at the Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has solved the structure of the viral machinery that Lassa virus uses to enter human cells. Their study, published June 2, 2017 in the journal Science, is the first to show a key piece of the viral structure, called the surface glycoprotein, for any member of the deadly arenavirus family.

The call came from the World Health Organization (WHO) director-general in May 2016 for a renewed attack on the global spread of vector-borne diseases.

The vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV) is proving to have significant population-level effects in Connecticut, with rates of precancerous lesions caused by HPV down drastically among young women, a new Yale School of Public Health study finds.

Subgroups of tuberculosis (TB)-causing bacteria can persist even when antibiotics wipe out most of the overall population. The need to eliminate these persistent subpopulations is one reason why TB treatment regimens are so lengthy. Now, researchers have shown that a single protein allows mycobacteria to generate diverse populations that can avoid TB drugs. The protein may be a target for intervention; blocking it might result in less mycobacterial diversity and shorten TB treatment courses. The research was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.