Category: Infection Control

Elon Musk's Neuralink company may have risked human exposure to deadly pathogens

After coming under fire from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink is under investigation by the Department of Transportation for allegedly risking human exposure to deadly pathogens v…

When it comes to masking in hospitals, '1 size doesn't fit all,' says Northwell Health's chief of infectious diseases

New York state dropped its masking requirement regardless of COVID-19 vaccination status in hospitals on Feb. 12, giving healthcare organizations the ability to set their own masking guidelines going forward.

C. difficile associated with decreased prostate cancer risk

Researchers discovered that men with a history of C. difficile — one of the most common hospital-acquired infections — had lower rates of prostate cancer.

Newly discovered protein may be therapeutic target for sepsis, other infections

The discovery of a protein showed signs of being a possible therapeutic target for monoclonal antibody treatment in sepsis cases as well as other infectious diseases, including COVID-19, according to research led by Haichao Wang, PhD, a professor and d…

Do masks slow virus spread? Jury is still out, review finds

Three years into the pandemic and hundreds of studies later, evidence is still lacking as to what extent, if at all, masks slow the spread of respiratory viruses such as flu or COVID-19, according to a research review published Jan. 30 in the Cochrane …

Adults on dialysis, particularly minorities, 100 times more likely to acquire staph infections than adults not on dialysis: CDC

Adults on dialysis treatment for end-stage kidney disease were 100 times more likely to be diagnosed with a Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infection when compared with adults not on dialysis, according to a Feb. 6 CDC Vital Signs report. 

Hospital-acquired sepsis cases jumped nearly 50% in California amid pandemic

In the first year of the pandemic, another problem quietly grew: hospital-acquired sepsis. Across California hospitals, the number of patients who developed sepsis while in the hospital increased by 46 percent between 2019 and 2021, according to a Feb….

Biomarker could help detect viral infections: study

A specific cytokine biomarker may be key to identifying any emerging infectious pathogens, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine found in a study.

U of Michigan Medical School researchers link gut microbiome, body temperature to sepsis

Until now, it has been largely unknown what drives body temperature variations in response to infections like sepsis. Now there may be an answer.

45% of patients infected with H. pylori do not receive proper treatment, 1st of its kind study finds

A new study published in Nature found major gaps in the treatments of patients infected with Helicobacter pylori, bacteria that can lead to stomach ulcers and is persistently found to be a risk factor for gastric cancer — the fourth-deadliest cancer wo…