Two studies published in the January 7, 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine have received a tremendous amount of play in the popular press. One paper out of Baylor in Houston looked at comparing chlorhexidine + alcohol vs. povidone iodine as a preoperative surgical prep. In a total of 849 subjects in … Read more
Telavancin (Vibativ – Theravance/Astellas) is a novel lipoglycopeptide, related to vancomycin, that has been recently approved by the FDA for the treatment of complicated skin and skin structure infections (cSSSI) caused by MRSA. Telavancin now joins the ranks of vancomycin, linezolid, daptomycin and tigecycline as being the only 5 antibiotics with this approval. An excellent … Read more
Some interesting news just came out yesterday. It looks like J&J’s new anti-MRSA cephalosporin, ceftobiprole has been, once again, turned back by the FDA. See the story here: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0572888.htm Many of us had pretty high hopes for this antibiotic as it was to be the first cephalosporin active against MRSA. Although it is IV only, … Read more
On Barry Block’s daily PM News (www.podiatrym.com) the other day a colleague presented a case of a neuropathic patient with no wounds presenting with what he felt was osteomyelitis of the 2nd and 3rd metatarsals. Although I did not feel that the case was actually osteomyelitis, a feeling I expressed in a response to that … Read more
Dr. Todd Divan, a podiatric physician from Potomac, IL, sent me an excellent question via personal email. On the belief that if one person asks a question, many others may be thinking the same thing, I reprint the question and answer here with Dr. Divan’s kind permission. Dr. Joseph, I listened to the lecture you … Read more
One of the ideas behind creating this blog was to be able to keep readers apprised of any new, interesting papers published in the infectious diseases and microbiology literature I follow on a regular basis. For background I will tell you that my 3 top journals include: Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID) – put out by … Read more
It has been about 2 weeks since my first post about ICAAC which has given me some time to ruminate a bit over the happenings there. I have always enjoyed this meeting because its emphasis on new antibiotic development, an area of great interest to me. It is sometimes a bit short on clinical information … Read more
It has been difficult to get any new posts up on the blog lately with an incredibly busy travel/lecture schedule. In the past 2-3 weeks I have been in Toronto for the very successful APMA National, Indianapolis for the Drum Corps International World Championships (not work related for a change!), Las Vegas this past week … Read more