Infection Control Journals - Hooray!!!

Hanging out at the 1st ICPIC, yesterday.  Pretty exciting with ~1100 attendees from the whole world. Save the date for the next conference in Geneva - June 25-28, 2013.

While wandering about, I got a cool text message from Preeti Malani, an Associate Editor at ICHE, who informed me that the ICHE journal impact score is up to 3.751 - that's quite a huge jump in 1 year.  I suspect it will be even higher next year given the size of the 1-year jump.  Independent of how you feel about impact scores, it is still very good news for those of us that publish in this excellent and well-focused journal.  Given that promotion and tenure of medical school faculty often depend on publication in high impact journals, this is a big deal for academic types. Three cheers to the entire ICHE editorial board and especially Suzanne Bradley, whose tireless efforts should now be fully appreciated.

...and to emphasize that you can never rest on your laurels...Andreas Voss, the ICPIC co-chair, just announced a new BMC journal titled - Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control (ARIC).  The website for submissions is not yet active, but I will post the info when it becomes available.

World MRSA Day: troisième partie

The Third Annual, World MRSA Day kicks off in Chicago again this year.  I have pasted the speakers and awardee lists below for your enjoyment. The event kicks off on October 1, but the actual day is October 2, 2011.  It seems like this should be held next year in a place other than Chicago. Perhaps the Netherlands? I heard they had low MRSA rates.

Keynote Speaker is Dr. William R. Jarvis of Jason & Jarvis Associates LLC, a world-renowned MRSA expert and formerly with the CDC. Rob Stafford, anchor of the NBC Chicago evening news and contributing correspondent for NBC Dateline is the emcee. Dr. Jorge Parada, Associate Professor of Medicine and Infectious Disease Specialist at Loyola University Health System also will be presenting and MRSA survivors and their family members will speak and share their personal stories.

2011 awards: Barry M. Farr M.D., Emeritus of UVA is recipient of the "Humanitarian Award" for his outstanding work, dedication and service to raising awareness and preventing MRSA infections. "Man of the Year" award recipient is Loren G. Miller, M.D. M.P.H., Associate Professor of Medicine at David Geffen School of Medicine and investigator of CA-MRSA treatment and prevention at the Los Angeles BioMedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and 'Woman of the Year' is Illinois State Representative Patti Bellock. The "Public Service" award is presented to the Veterans Administration Health System for their exemplary dedication to patient safety in preventing MRSA infections. Loyola University Health System will receive the "Hospital Leader Award" for their dedication in reducing MRSA infections using ADI.

New use for BCG vaccine?

Photo: Kirk McCoy, LA Times

The Los Angeles is reporting on a paper to be presented at the American Diabetes Association meeting which shows that BCG vaccine may be helpful in the treatment of type 1 diabetes via its ability to increase TNF, which in turns blocks destruction of insulin secreting cells in the pancreas. This is interesting and may have implications for infectious disease specialists if this therapy is adopted.

Early summer slow down

For various reasons, I suspect we'll be posting less frequently over the next two or three weeks. I know I will, anyway, and I think Eli will also be otherwise occupied. Unfortunately, this isn't because any of us will be lounging in hammocks. The photo is just, you know, a metaphor for less blogging activity. Or maybe it's just a pretty picture.

Nosing around for staphylococci

In my last post about the newly described MRSA strains that carry the mecA_LGA251, I referred again to the “empty cassette variants” (or “mecA dropouts”) that are missed by commercial MRSA PCR tests that target the orfX gene but don’t contain mecA primers. I also mentioned that we’d soon be publishing our first year of experience with this. Well, here is the short report I was talking about, describing our ~8% rate of false positivity due to empty cassette variants, and characterizing the strains in question. We found substantial genetic diversity among the “drop-out” strains, meaning that the problem wasn’t due to the introduction of a single clone. When we tested these MSSA isolates using the newer GeneXpert MRSA/SA Nasal Assay (the “Nasal Complete” assay), they were correctly identified as S. aureus but not MRSA (this new assay has primers for the mecA gene). Even the “Nasal Complete” assay is susceptible to false positives, though, from the simultaneous presence of an MSSA and a methicillin-resistant coagulase-negative staphylococcus (MR-CoNS) in the same nose (the prevalence of MR-CoNS + MSSA co-colonization was 3.4% in one study). Indeed, the package insert describes a PPV of about 75% for the Nasal Complete—for MRSA, the 25% “false positives” divide equally between those for which culture was negative (which might reflect increased sensitivity of PCR) and those for which the culture grew only MSSA (which may reflect MR-CoNS/MSSA co-colonization). Who knew the nares would be such a vexing place for those who design and market PCR tests?

“Not your father’s CMS”

I just returned from my first HICPAC meeting….and no, I won’t risk being thrown off the committee for discussing all of our deliberations on this blog (at least right now I won’t). However, I did want to point out a fun moment from a presentation by John O’Brien from CMS. John gave an update on the CMS Partnership for Patients, which we blogged about earlier.

The PFP is still nascent, and we’ll see how much of an impact it has on the ground. But the presentations by Joe McCannon at SHEA and this one from John O’Brien were both encouraging, and almost certainly reflect the impact that Don Berwick has had on the culture there. The photo above was taken at the break after John’s lecture. As you can see, there is a painting on the back of his suit jacket, depicting patient safety themes. During his talk he briefly discussed this “walking art”, and how it helps start conversations in airports, at conferences, etc. The painting is the work of Regina Holliday, a Washington DC-based patient rights arts advocate. The full story and explanation of the images on the jacket can be found on her blog, here.

Government funds $4.5 million antibacterial resistance grant: The RUSSIAN government

Dr. Kabanov

I was checking out Missouri River flood reporting in regional papers, when I came across this article in the Omaha World-Herald. It seems that the Russian government is concerned about drug-resistant bacteria and has given a $4.5 million grant to support the work of University of Nebraska Medical Center researcher Alexander Kabanov.  Kabanov leads the UNMC Center for Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine.  I often mention that there is little support for antibacterial resistance research and antibacterial drug discovery. While this is certainly true in the US, we don't have much data on funding in other countries.  Every little (or big) bit helps.