I apologize if this sounds dumb. my 92 father is in a nursing facility currently, receiving what should have been an 8 week treatment of IV vancomycin for an infected pacemaker. After 6 weeks he developed red man syndrome and was taken off the vanco and placed on oral doxycycline. He has suddenly developed mental confusion, a very rare thing for him, the man is almost always very sharp and alert. I have been hearing from others that this confusion in elderly can be caused by UTI. I noticed that his urine looked cloudy but I was thinking that since he’s on all these antibiotics there is no way he could have any infection. But I decided to google it and am reading these antibiotics don’t necessarily treat UTI. So before I go in there tomorrow demanding urine tests, I was hoping for some informed opinions, Would doxycycline or vancomycin keep him from harboring a UTI this whole time?

Hi all..I'm a pharmacist at a hospital and we have a patient growing Sphingomonas spp in 2/2 blood cultures, still waiting on sensitivities as its a lab send out. The attending doctor thinks it's a contaminant and doesn't necessarily want to treat. Does anyone have any experience seeing this bacteria in a patient's cultures? TYIA

I’m just curious if the Original Strain Of covid or Alpha, Beta, Gamma, delta and even ‘dead’ omicron subvariants are still somewhere in this world naturally occurring. Im aware of delta- omicron recombinants that are still around such as XAY and XBC, But i’m talking about the original B.1.617.2 Delta or other variants.

Hi I am a biologist doing a msc in molecular, inmmuno amd microbiology. (Inmogrant to the EU) . My main goals are being able to stay. I have experience in vector diseases (mostly mosquito surveillance) but I dont know in what field should I deep more. As I dont think I can get hired easily for the industry so I will probably do a pHD to prolong my visa. So mu question is wether I should do it in epidemiology or public health or something more experimental like inmunology, epidemiology or again mol bio. As I said my main goal is mostly finding a way to stay and have a job in any field that wont consume me

hello, im doing a research poster on an infectious disease and i picked meningitis. I know meningitis is the inflammation of your meninges but while researching I saw there was viral and bacterial. Could anyone answer this question for me? thanks.

I know a lot of people who are migrating towards public health and epidemiology, but do you think that in a few years there will be too many people trying to work on infectious diseases? (I mean for biologist and in Europe)

Pertussis vaccine, acellular vs. whole-cell

Hey,

I wonder if anyone could try to explain something to me.

Is the pertussis acellular vaccine effective for ELIMINATION of B. pertussis carriage or does it only help with the disease course. So that you don’t experience the cough but still carry and are infectious? What are the antigens in the acellular vaccine vs. the whole-cell one? Can you infect others even if you’re vaccinated with acellular vaccine but carry B. pertussis?

Thanks

There’s so many people who cannot get better after suffering from ureaplasma and many have the infection spread even after testing negative…. Why is there little to no information about such a dangerous infection?

A doctor told me that patients can experience varicella multiple times.

Not varicella and then herpes zoster, but varicella, and the signs and symptoms that varicella produces, multiple times. In other words, a diagnosis of varicella can be made multiple times in the same patient, over time.

My understanding of varicella is different to this doctor's, and I wanted to please run my understanding past this community.

My understanding, as follows:Primary varicella zoster virus infection causes varicella --> During infection, VZV virions transported to sensory ganglia --> VZV establishes latent infection --> Viral replication can be reactivated, and if so, VZV reaches the skin via anterograde axonal transport --> This causes herpes zoster. HZ can occur multiple times in the same patient, but not varicella as natural VZV infection confers lifelong immunity. VZV establishes latent infection in all patients.

Please could somebody correct me if I am wrong as I would like to learn more about this please?

Thank you very much.

My 3.5 week old baby was kissed right on the face by a family member with an active cold sore outbreak. I washed her face with soap and water immediately. Does anyone here have any evidence or recommendations regarding prophylactic antiviral to baby prior to development of any symptoms?

This is a selfq.

I’m in a pickle and ID doctors in my area are booked out for months.

I have had retinal vasculitis & intermediate uveitis for 3 years and have been treated with immunosuppressants and steroids since. Recently a new rhuem decided to test me for toxo antibodies.

Both IgG & Igm came back positive.

IgG: 562 Igm: 12.4

It seems like they’re stumped on what to do next. One ID doctor that was available said to stop my immunosuppressants (Humira & Methotrexate) and start Bactrim for 6 weeks. Rheumatologist says to keep going with immunosuppressants.

My Ophthalmologist said my eye inflammation was not related to toxo. The big fear for me is stopping drugs that kept my eyes quiet, especially if this is an old infection.

Any ideas on all of this?

Hi! I'm starting to think more about what my dissertation aims might be and it'd be great to get some insight from folks outside of my bubble. So... do you have any ID-related ☤ epidemiologic questions that remain unanswered? What questions do you believe the field as a whole has yet to answer? Please provide sources if appropriate!

☤ Respiratory viruses are my purview, so I'm especially interested in takes from folks who also work with respiratory viruses!

Among 52000 borrelia seropositive individuals, borrelia seropositivity was associated with short-term increased risk of atrioventricular block but not increased risk of other cardiac conduction disorders or long-term increased risks.

https://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(24)00050-8/abstract

Hello, I am working on my thesis and I am in need of any suggestion that could point me in the direction of hantavirus case data attached to geographical coordinates OR something county level or finer. I’m trying to look in the western US but I can adjust to a different region of data exists there. Ideally I’m looking for (offset is fine) point data in order to perform a risk analysis. if anyone has any suggestions on where to look, I’d be eternally grateful. I have tried the usual suspects - some state health dept websites, CDC, ECDC, etc.

Reservations: https://www.sfu.ca/gradstudies/life-community/news-events/events/pdc/2023-one-health/marc-lipsitch/rsvp.html

This talk considers how we can measure the public health value of efforts to discover viruses in nonhuman animal populations (virus prospecting) as a means of advancing countermeasures for pandemic and epidemic diseases.

Using the example of filoviruses, we show that there is little evidence to suggest that countermeasure development has been accelerated due to virus prospecting work.

Zooming out, many potentially and actually important pathogens for human health still lack vaccines, so adding more candidate pathogens does not accelerate a rate limiting step. We consider the implications of these findings for policy.

Dr. Marc Lipsitch is Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics and the Interdisciplinary Program on Infectious Disease Epidemiology. His scientific research concerns the effect of naturally acquired host immunity, vaccine-induced immunity, and other public health interventions on the population biology of pathogens and the consequences for human health.

He has authored 400 peer-reviewed publications on antimicrobial resistance, epidemiologic methods, mathematical modeling of infectious disease transmission, pathogen population genomics, research ethics, biosafety/security, and immunoepidemiology of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Dr. Lipsitch is a leader in research and scientific communication on COVID-19. Dr. Lipsitch received his BA in philosophy from Yale and his DPhil in zoology from Oxford. He did postdoctoral work at Emory University and CDC. He is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology and the National Academy of Medicine.

​

I don't work in medicine or science and would love to hear the thoughts of ID doctors/scientists about current measles situation in Florida and how it is being handled. What do you believe is the motivation for these types of decisions? What are your predictions for the outcome? Etc.

Ok need my ID and micro brains to give their thoughts on this study. At first, it appears to be an anti-vaxxers dream. They report nearly 2.5x risk of GBS, 2.0x risk of cerebral venous thrombosis, and 3x risk of ADEM with vaccination. My problem with the study is there are no controls (I.e., unvaccinated folks) and no discussion of who acquired COVID infection during the study period. I’m just a lowly intern and certainly not a statistician but it seems like that was intentional. I’ve heard anecdotes that the risks of these adverse events are significantly higher with sars-cov2 infection, especially severe infection requiring ICU care.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38350768/

We have been looking for the cause of my uveitis for three years now. I have taken the tests for all sorts of infections under the sun, all of which were negative. Recently, a membrane from my eye was submitted for TB culture. There was no growth for two weeks. We are still waiting for the final report, which will be released after eight weeks. I wonder if we were likely to have a positive result if we did a PCR test instead? I have no symptoms of TB or anything. My doctor chose to test for TB because we live in a country where TB is everywhere, but I tested negative for all blood and skin tests for TB.

I’m writing this on behalf of a friend that I’m concerned for.

My friend is early 30s, was previously very physically healthy, and now has long-COVID as of a few months ago. They first tested positive for COVID in March of 2023, quarantined, and took a long time to stop testing positive (about 5 weeks I think). They ended up testing positive again only a couple months later (confirmed on PCR), after VERY limited exposure to people (including working from home). They are currently testing positive a third time, even though this whole time they’ve been very isolated/quarantined. (As in, has not been in a room with more than 1-2 people, all masking with N95s, all asymptomatic, for months.) I should mention, they are testing positive on home RATs (different brands, batches, etc) but tested negative on PCR 1 day after testing positive & starting paxlovid at home.

They’ve seen a neuro-opthamologist, and their primary care physician. PCP is “concerned about mental health”, which to me is like yeah, duh, they don’t want to be in this position but need help to figure out what’s going on that they are catching covid 3x a year while in almost total isolation. After they tested negative in-office, PCP suggested they do not have COVID but perhaps have some other virus (no specific virus mentioned).

What mechanism could be causing a false positive on at home test, but a negative PCR test? Is it possible that they did have covid, but tested negative on PCR one day after positive on at home? The tests were not expired and were used correctly. Could a different infection cause a false positive on a COVID RAT?

My whole life I’ve had a terrible sense of smell. About a year ago, I got Covid for the first and only time. Ever since then, my sense of smell has been so strong. Like not just a small difference, but a huge difference in my sense of smell. On multiple occasions in the past year, I have smelt someone’s breath during a conversation at arm’s length. This never happened in the +30 years of my pre-Covid life. I smell things my husband sometimes doesn’t, and he believes he has a good sense of smell. Has this happened to anyone else? My husband says I should report it to researchers, but I don’t really know where to report it to.

I am now a spectator in a FB group of 200 women diagnosed with candida glabrata overgrowth. A large % say they can't get an ID doc to treat them. Why is that? I had successful treatment with ampho suppositories+ eraxis iv from an ID doc. I feel like that treatment saved my life. I want the same for all the others but they keep getting the run around. TY

This subreddit feels more like an “ask ID docs” one rather than one to share data, interesting cases, or new developments in the field of ID. Is there a different subreddit that would provide this? Thanks!

Okay so I’ve reached a point of desperation in my health saga.

I am to the point where I honestly just need like a group of smart, curious, trained specialists in a room for like a half day to a day to help gut check my read on situation and/or offer their own interpretations.

And if medicine worked like law or any other field, I’d literally offer to exhaust my savings and pay for specialization on a retainer basis because the biggest obstacle, I think, to be moving forward is the right minds having time to absorb my full case and the top most likely contributing factors/drivers (as well as likely some downstream consequences that will need to be addressed too). And I basically have it boiled down to top 1-2 most likely plausible issues driving my disease state and corresponding promising treatments as well as some back-up issues.

So I have a head start. And no this is not based on any reddit or dr Google info. I have worked in healthcare consulting for 17+ years so I’ve had to acquire a good amt of domain expertise just to be able to be respected/drive strategy involving large investments (with clients all being md or PhD trained folks) so I at least know enough to be dangerous (though not enough to be confident enough I should go rogue without getting input from actual researchers or MDs who know more than me), have seen a ton of specialist, have docs in family (husband is radiologist, etc.) so everything I have is grounded in the latest research (at least my read of it) and at least slightly more than educated guesses.

That said, because of how complex and rare some of my issues are (and my case history which started post covid and only got more complex because everything was unfortunately dumped into that damn long covid bucket which might have resulted in action against some serious things that could have been actioned against even if they were indirectly related to COVID due to immune system over-reaction, post-infectious inflammation, hormonal or for disturbances, or the host other other random explanations you want to believe), it does require some time to digest. And, even more so, the science is admittedly still emerging so it will require some borrowing of promising methods from overlapping bodies of research as well as some extrapolation or deductive reasoning to take a chance on ideating on a more custom protocol. And I’m confident seemingly smart people would disagree with each other/have perspectives based on their own read of research I share. But that is a good thing/exactly what I want. Some healthy discussion (even debate) and then some consensus building around best way to move forward (which, given it will be trial and error anyway, is just downselecting and sequencing promising, albeit not guaranteed, interventions).

The issue is I’m at a loss for how to get this done in an integrated and streamlined fashion in context of our existing medical system. I’ve seen dozen of the top specialists in country and all agree things are quite wrong (have tons of imaging, abnormal biomarkers, etc) but only have ideas to tackle distinct symptoms which feels like a game of whack-a-mole (which has gotten me nowhere in two years but basically making me a shell of my former self and being bedridden).

So while I largely hate the outcomes of crowdsourcing and hackathons for most use cases, it dawned on me that is legit what I need in absence of being able to find some clinic with a ton of specialists who actually have time and aren’t snake oil (and no a teaching hospital hasn’t been answer despite it conceptually being the most promising thing I could hope for seemingly), haha.

And I turn to ID because that is where most specialists believe im falling short of getting the right care. And my biomarkers suggest I’m fighting at least one if not multiple co-infections (and I even know exact foodborne illness onset given it hospitalized my husband after we were both exposed but I got no treatment likely due to female immune system being stronger despite still having bad symptoms for 8+ weeks and even 90 percent certain on the highly virulent pathogen - can show data).

But it would require at least some momentary suspensions of disbeliefs for some (or at least “thought experiments”) for folks to entertain a lot of the latest literature around intracellular bacterial communities, UPECs and MMP-9s, and other topics as well as conclusions I have drawn from other bodies of literature (which, again, open invitation to poke holes and offer alternatives).

However I feel strongly that the right set of perpetually curious and continual learner types might even find inherent value in getting in a virtual room with peers and exploring some of this research and these topics. But if not, I’d still try to make worthwhile by paying or offering cash prize or something else. And/or maybe I’d be a great case report or provide research ideas (paradoxically, before my health abruptly declined, I was very into health optimization so I weirdly have a ton of prior baseline data that a researcher might love).

I’m sure this is a pipe dream but since this has literally ruined my life and career, nothing to lose by asking. Do you think if I fleshed the concept out further I’d get any traction at all? Brutal honesty is fine.