Tag: infectious diseases

Will Microbes Finally Force Modernization of the American Health Care System?

Feb 14, 2022

BY MIKE MAGEE

Science has a way of punishing humans for their arrogance.

In 1996, Dr. Michael Osterholm found himself rather lonely and isolated in medical research circles. This was the adrenaline-infused decade of blockbuster pharmaceuticals focused squarely on chronic debilitating diseases of aging.

And yet, there was Osterholm, in Congressional testimony delivering this message: “I am here to bring you the sobering and unfortunate news that our ability to detect and monitor infectious disease threats to health in this country is in serious jeopardy…For 12 of the States or territories, there is no one who is responsible for food or water-borne surveillance. You could sink the Titanic in their back yard and they would not know they had water.”

Osterholm’s choice of metaphor perhaps reflected his own frustration and inability to alter the course of the medical-industrial complex despite microbial icebergs directly ahead.

Got an Infection? Good Luck Finding an ID Doctor

Mar 15, 2015• 2

By PHILIP LEDERER, MD

BOSTON, Ma. — It was Christmas Day. I was on call at the hospital and was waiting for my wife and 6-week-old son to come so we could eat lunch together. She was bringing kimbap, sweet potatoes, and avocados. But then my pager buzzed.

On the phone was a hospitalist physician.

“Is this ID? We have a new consult for you,” she said. “This man has a history of dementia. For some reason he has a urinary catheter to empty his bladder. We gave him an antibiotic, but now his urine is growing a resistant bacteria.”

I sighed. Yet another catheter associated urinary tract infection.

I walked up the stairs to his hospital room. He was bald, thin, and sitting alone in bed. The peas and fish on his tray were untouched. There were no gifts or tree in his room. I washed my hands, put on gloves and a yellow isolation gown, and introduced myself.

“How are you?”

“Ok, I guess,” he replied.

“Do you know where you are?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You are in the hospital. Do you know what day today is?”

Dad Has the Flu and There’s a Baby at Home

Mar 4, 2015• 13

By PHILIP LEDERER, MD

At 6:30 AM, I kissed my 14-week-old son Joe on the forehead and headed off to work at the hospital. By 3 PM I was back in bed with a hacking cough and a fever. I had influenza.

As a doctor training in infectious diseases, I knew that the flu can be dangerous in vulnerable populations like little babies. I had visions of Joe being admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit, as I swallowed a pill of oseltamivir (brand name “Tamiflu”) and shivered under the covers.

Should I also give my little boy Tamiflu to prevent him from getting sick? The answer should be clear to an infectious disease physician-in-training, right?

I felt competing instincts. Paternal: to “do something” to prevent Joe from getting the flu. Medical: “do nothing,” as the rampant overuse of antibiotics in children has had negative consequences and the same might be true for antivirals.

As I researched the question further, I learned that the decision to give prophylactic Tamiflu is anything but simple.

Close contacts of people with the flu (including babies) can receive Tamiflu if they are at high risk for influenza complications. One Greek study of 13 newborns found that the drug was safe but did not address its effectiveness. Moreover, the number of babies who would need to receive Tamiflu to prevent one serious case of influenza is unknown.

New Interventions Needed to Halt the Growth of “Superbugs”

Sep 24, 2013• 4

By Brad Spellberg, MD

How do you tell the family members of a critically ill patient that their loved one is going to die because there are no antibiotics left to treat the patient’s infection? In the 21^st century, doctors are not supposed to have to say things like this to patients or their families.

Ever since the discovery of penicillin in 1940, patients have expected a pill or an intravenous injection to cure their infections. But our hubris as a society with respect to antibiotics has been exposed by the rise of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued a new study, entitled “Antibiotic resistance threats in the United States, 2013,” reporting that at least 2 million people become infected with bacteria that are highly resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections. These estimates are highly conservative. Many more people die from other conditions that were complicated by an antibiotic-resistant infection.

Meantime, we have ever-decreasing new weapons to wage the war against such infections because the availability of new antibiotics is down by more than 90% since 1983.

Interventions are needed to encourage investment in new antibiotics, to prevent the infections in the first place, to slow the spread of resistance and to discover new ways to attack microbes without driving resistance.

A major reason for the “market failure” of antibiotics is that they are taken for short periods of time, so they have a lower return on investment than drugs that are taken for years (such as cholesterol-lowering drugs). The Food and Drug Administration can help reverse the market failure by adopting new regulatory approaches to encourage development of critically needed new antibiotics.

Should Doctors Keep Patients’ HIV Status a Secret?

Aug 11, 2013• 53

By Lisa Fitzpatrick, MD

At my infectious-diseases clinic in Southeast Washington, I work with some of the city’s most indigent patients. Some don’t have jobs, a home, a car or enough to eat. But recently, I saw a patient whose problem made these issues seem trivial.

Dealing with fatigue, a cough and a fever for several months, this woman in her 40s had been evaluated by four internists. They had tested her for a variety of conditions but not HIV. Each had recommended rest, two prescribed antibiotics, and one suggested an over-the-counter cough medicine. Experiencing no physical relief from these suggestions, the woman had decided to “lay down and die.”

However, after her longtime partner insisted she get medical help, she agreed to go to a hospital emergency room. After a rapid test, which she initially refused because she said she was not at risk for HIV, she learned that she was HIV-positive.

After that ER visit, she brought her partner, whom she credits with saving her life, to my clinic to be tested; she was concerned that she had transmitted the virus to him. He tested positive. About a week later, when he accompanied her to an appointment with me, I asked if he had been seen by a doctor to discuss treatment. He said no and indicated that he wanted to establish care in the clinic.

When I asked if he had ever been on HIV drugs, he gazed at the medication chart and pointed out his previous regimen, a cocktail that contained indinavir. Because I and many other doctors stopped prescribing this medication a decade ago, I knew he had been keeping his condition from her for years. He stopped talking and avoided my gaze. It was clear he knew that I had learned his secret. I had many questions for him; but this visit was for her.

It was not the right moment to dredge up this history and ask how he could keep his diagnosis hidden while watching his partner struggle with her health. I chose not to ask about his dishonesty, their relationship and whether they had used condoms to protect her from getting HIV. At this point, I needed to help her understand that, even though she felt weak and sick, the medications would soon make her feel better. And that, with the right treatment, she could still live a long life.

While talking with my patient about her treatment, my mind kept wandering back to her partner’s secret. Was it my role to admonish him in front of her, or would that make things worse? What would they say to each other when they got home? I wanted to discuss these questions, but did I have a right to insert my judgment into this situation? At a private visit with me two weeks later, she let me know that this was the moment she realized he’d been keeping his diagnosis from her for years.

As a physician, I am not allowed to reveal any medical information about my patients or their circumstances without their written permission. This confidentiality is sacred. But in this case, that constraint felt inappropriate and irresponsible.

Why You Probably Have a Lot Less to Fear From the Latest Superbug Than You Think

Apr 28, 2013• 2

By COLIN SON, MD

Infectious disease is the most hyperbolic of all medical fields, at least when the media gets ahold of such.

Right now we are to fear a new avian influenza virus. Previously there was another avian influenza strain whose outbreak threatened the world and of course SARS and, more distantly, the ebola virus and the threat of bioterrorism. And on the periphery, as these acute threats come and go, is the persistent threat of super bugs; bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics. Sometimes all antibiotics.

I remember my pharmacology professor in medical school claiming that within our practice lives we would reach the useful end of antibiotics. A claim, literally, that physicians would no longer have any use for antibiotics by the time I reached the end of my career.

Scary stuff but evidence that such outrageousness sells pharmacology in a classroom as much as it does magazines on a news stand. Time magazine a post called “The End of Antibiotics?” referencing a Guardian article along the same lines. This followed a similar 2009 scare article in Time.