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There have been several advances in medical understanding of the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of CDI since the last national guidelines were published in 2010.
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Two critically important infection control issues injection safety and antibiotic resistance are vying to be the top priority in the next phase of the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) Action Plan to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs), said Don Wright, MD, MPH, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Healthcare Quality at the HHS.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has created a new website to alert infection preventionists, clinicians and the public about a deadly but poorly understood syndrome: sepsis.
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An anti-vaccine movement that has been amplified by the Internet and endorsed by vocal celebrities has created a persistent public fear that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism in children.
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Once virtually eradicated through routine immunization, measles and mumps are making a striking comeback in the U.S. in 2014 with a record number of post-vaccination era measles cases and several large mumps outbreaks on college campuses.
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Association of Public Health Laboratories. Laboratory testing for the diagnosis of HIV infection: updated recommendations. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/HIVtestingAlgorithmRecommendation-Final.pdf
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Among 3602 young adults from coastal Kenya, the overall prevalence of HIV-1 infection was 3.9%. Of 241 patients presenting with fever, 4 patients (1.7%) had acute HIV infection (AHI). 1 of 265 (0.4%) of non-febrile patients had AHI. Malaria was confirmed by PCR in 4 (1.7%) of the febrile patients.
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HIV-infected patients diagnosed with cryptococcal meningitis who received antiretroviral therapy (ART) 5 weeks after starting antifungal therapy had improved survival at 26 weeks compared to similar patients who received ART at 1-2 weeks (45% vs 30%, respectively, P=0.03).
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Compared to manual surveillance methods, an electronic surveillance tool for catheter-associated urinary tract infections had a high negative predictive value but a low positive predictive value.
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The escalating presence of XDR TB in South Africa has created a public health crisis, squeezing already scarce public health dollars. While drug resistant TB represents a small percent of the total TB case load in South Africa, the cost of care for those patients soaked up nearly half of the governments entire TB budget for 2010 (about $126 million USD).
