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About 2·1 million pregnant women have active syphilis every year. Without screening and treatment, 69% of these women will have an adverse outcome of pregnancy. A study reviewed the literature systematically to determine the effectiveness of screening interventions to prevent congenital syphilis and other adverse pregnancy outcomes.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Mon, 12 September 2011
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf
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Metallo-β-lactamases are resistance determinants of increasing clinical relevance in Gram-negative bacteria. Because of their broad range, potent carbapenemase activity and resistance to inhibitors, these enzymes can confer resistance to almost all β-lactams. Since the 1990s, several metallo-β-lactamases encoded by mobile DNA have emerged in important Gram-negative pathogens (ie, in Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii). Some of these enzymes (eg, VIM-1 and NDM-1) have been involved in the recent crisis resulting from the international dissemination of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae and other enterobacteria.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Tue, 10 May 2011
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf
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Viral tropism is the ability of viruses to enter and infect specific host cells and is based on the ability of viruses to bind to receptors on those cells. Testing for HIV tropism is recommended before prescribing a chemokine receptor blocker. In most European countries, HIV tropism is identified with tropism phenotype testing. New data support genotype analysis of the HIV third hypervariable loop (V3) for the identification of tropism. The European Consensus Group on clinical management of tropism testing was established to make recommendations to clinicians and clinical virologists.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Tue, 10 May 2011
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf
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Outbreaks of serious pneumococcal disease can occur with high attack rates in certain settings. We systematically reviewed studies of interventions implemented in pneumococcal clusters and those reporting the effect of antibiotics on carriage reduction to assess the effectiveness of interventions. Evidence was graded according to the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network system. Of 28 identified cluster reports, one showed that administration of antibiotics to close contacts reduced risk of pneumococcal disease.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Mon, 7 February 2011
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf
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WHO declared the end of the influenza pandemic, just over a year since it began. Here is a reminder of how events unfurled.Early 2009—The earliest confirmed case of infection with what WHO subsequently dubbed pandemic H1N1 2009 virus was a 6-month-old girl from San Luis Potosi state, Mexico with symptom onset on Feb 24. Almost 2 months later, on April 19, Mexico declared a national alert.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Wed, 13 October 2010
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf
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As the influenza A H1N1 2009–10 pandemic is declared over, the process of review and reflection is already underway to establish what lessons can be learned for any future pandemic. The immediate concern is continued vigilance, since H1N1 is now circulating with seasonal influenza variants, and on occasions H5N1. WHO Director General Margaret Chan has encouraged countries to now review their pandemic preparedness, while the independent review of the worldwide response to the pandemic, including the performance of WHO and the functioning of the International Health Regulations, is expected to be completed within 6 months.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Wed, 13 October 2010
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf
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As the influenza A H1N1 2009–10 pandemic is declared over, the process of review and reflection is already underway to establish what lessons can be learned for any future pandemic. The immediate concern is continued vigilance, since H1N1 is now circulating with seasonal influenza variants, and on occasions H5N1. WHO Director General Margaret Chan has encouraged countries to now review their pandemic preparedness, while the independent review of the worldwide response to the pandemic, including the performance of WHO and the functioning of the International Health Regulations, is expected to be completed within 6 months. At the heart of the lessons learned is communication, say experts.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Mon, 27 September 2010
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf
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Cryptococci are human fungal pathogens definitely worthy of scrutiny, believe researchers arranging to meet at the First International Conference on Model Hosts in Heraklion, Crete, Greece (Sept 5–10, 2010). “This meeting will highlight the need to understand more about the basic, core elements of cryptococcal pathogenesis using invertebrate hosts like Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, and Galleria mellonella. These model hosts have been used to study host-fungal interactions and some of them allow us to perform whole-animal high throughput infection assays, that complement the use of mammalian models of cryptococcal infection”, notes Eleftherios Mylonakis (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA), a member of the conference committee. Fungal virulence might have evolved as protection against predation by amoebae and nematodes, and innate immune responses have been broadly conserved across many phyla.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Thu, 23 September 2010
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf
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Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim, husband and wife, and co-principle researchers on the Centre for AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) trial, received a standing ovation at the recent International AIDS Society Conference in Vienna when they announced their results, which showed—for the first time—that the use of an antiretroviral microbicidal gel can protect against HIV transmission. Mathematical modelling suggests that, in South Africa alone, this gel can prevent up to 1·3 million new infections and 8000 HIV-related deaths during the next 20 years.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Tue, 14 September 2010
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf
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An International Symposium held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on August 24–27, has focused on the lessons learned from the smallpox experience and featured debates on one very thorny issue still surrounding smallpox—whether we should destroy all stocks of the viral strains held in the world.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases - Tue, 14 September 2010
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf