Tag: infectious disease
1. Co-prescription of clarithromycin and direct oral anticoagulants was associated with a higher rate of 30-day hospitalization with hemorrhage when compared with co-prescription of azithromycin.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
In recent years, direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) like apixaban and rivaroxaban have overtaken vitamin K antagonists as the anti-coagulation drugs of...
1. School closures, physical-distancing, shielding older adults ≥70 years, and quarantining symptomatic COVID-19 patients were all likely to reduce the basic reproduction number (R0).
2. R0 reductions were insufficient across individual intervention methods to avoid overwhelming healthcare systems.
3. Periods of lockdown was the only intervention to reduce R0 to ≤1,...
1. Researchers have identified a significant increase in hospitalizations due to infective endocarditis related to drug use.
2. Heart valve surgeries among patients with drug use-associated infective endocarditis have also increased with the opioid epidemic.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
Study Rundown: The authors of this study utilized a statewide hospital discharge...
1. For predicting short-term mortality in patients with suspected infection, quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) had moderate specificity and poor sensitivity.
2. The systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria were poorly specific but more sensitive than qSOFA, which supports the use of the SIRS criteria as a screening tool...
1. In this point-prevalence and quasi-experimental study, contamination of skin and clothing was common during personal protective equipment (PPE) removal.
2. Educational session interventions decreased risk of inadvertent contamination by 40% that persisted at 1 and 3 months post-intervention.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
Study Rundown: Use of PPE is important to...
1. Increased in-hospital time to surgery was not associated with an increased risk of appendix rupture among adults treated with appendectomy.
2. Factors that increased the risk of perforation included male gender, lack of insurance, and >3 comorbid conditions.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
Study Rundown: Previous reports have demonstrated conflicting results...
Image: PD HIV budding off from a lymphocyte
1. Limited HIV adaptations to host immune system and limited change in HIV viral functioning from 1980’s to 2000’s.
2. Roughly 2% overall change in HIV sequence diversity from 1980’s to 2000’s.
Evidence Rating Level: 2 (Good)
Study Rundown: This study assessed how HIV sequences...
Image: PD
1. Over a 20-year period, China reduced prevalence of smear-positive tuberculosis by more than half by shifting tuberculosis treatment from hospitals to public health centers that implemented the directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS) strategy.
2. The directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS) regimen was particularly effective at reducing prevalence of...
Image: PD
1. Rotavirus vaccine 116E was shown to have similar efficacy to current vaccines RotaTeq and Rotarix in developing countries and may prove more sustainable in low-resource settings.
2. Protection against rotavirus gastroenteritis with vaccine 116E demonstrated positive correlation with severity of infection, suggesting that it may be a fitting...
Image: PD
1. 139 individuals were infected with H7N9 (avian influenza) with 82% having had an exposure to live animals.
2. Approximately 2,700 close contacts of the patients were evaluated for the virus with only 1% developing respiratory symptoms and none testing positive for H7N9. However, four families may have had...