September 2019: Global ID Journal Club
Hi folks. In lieu of a preamble discussion this month, I want to introduce you to a new online resource for ID medical education– global ID journal club!
This journal club is on Twitter at 9pm EST the first Monday of every month. In order to participate, you just need to follow these three steps:
1) Open a twitter account if you don’t have one already
2) Follow the ID journal club account, @IDJClub
3) During the journal club session, follow along as the journal club host tweets a summary and analysis of the month’s article using the @IDJClub account, and tweet and comment with your input using the hashtag #IDJClub
The @IDJClub team selects a recent paper to discuss each month and tweets out the selection to our followers ahead of time. We’re trying to include research from every subfield within infectious diseases while still focusing on the highest-yield articles, and we encourage your suggestions. Right now @IDJClub is hosted on a rotating basis by yours truly (University of Nebraska), Dr. Ilan Schwartz (University of Alberta), Dr. Todd McCarty (University of Alabama-Birmingham), and Dr. Laila Woc-Coburn (Baylor College of Medicine). However, we’re certainly interested in having other folks host; DM me or any of the other hosts if you are interested.
If you ever miss an @IDJClub session, don’t worry. These sessions will be archived as twitter moments on this very site, under the rightmost tab on the navigation bar, “#IDJClub – Global ID Journal Club”.
A few quick programming notes. First, in the interest of not falling further behind, I’m going to combine October and November in the next update. Time permitting, I may throw a few more links to papers that didn’t make the cut in tweet threads, as I’ve done previously. Second, in order to be a bit more thorough without getting burned out, I’ve started including a few very brief discussions of papers at the end of each segment. These are generally not papers that I read in as much detail as those I discuss in full, though wherever possible I’m still pulling up the main text to check the methods and tables rather than just regurgitating the abstract. Let me know how these work for you; if they aren’t adding value, I’ll stop posting them. Finally, in the next few months I will start integrating my work here with the UNMC ID blog run by my colleagues Drs. Jasmine Marcelin and Kelly Cawcutt. To be clear, that isn’t going to involve anything here going away! Rather, some of the content summaries that used to be on header pages like this will also go there, so that readers of the UNMC blog can get the executive summary and then come here for the full reviews. It’s synergy!
Now then, on to the infectious diseases literature:
Antimicrobial agents research this month included work on lefalumin for CAP, ceftolozane/tazobactam for HAP/VAP, and bacteriophage therapy for orthopedic hardware infections.
ID diagnostics research topics this month included changing phlebotomy practices to minimize blood culture contamination, upper vs lower respiratory tract PCR testing for immunocompromised patients with viral infections, the blood culture yield cost of early antibiotic administration, the import of Corynebacterium bacteremia, and new diagnostic tests for M.tuberculosis drug resistance, HCV, and vaginitis.
General ID papers out this month covered clofazamine for tuberculosis, the viability of DAIR for late prosthetic joint infections, single versus multiple doses of ivermectin for strongyloidiasis, the outcomes of antibiotic suppression for orthopedic hardware infections, short course therapy for cystitis in men, the difficulty of diagnosing pneumonia in the ED, ultra short course therapy for osteo in kids, and the value of prehospital antibiotics for invasive meningococcal infection.
HIV and STDs research covered factors predicting IRIS and IRIS-associated death in patients starting ART, the merits of INSTIs versus PIs and NNRTIs for patients with low CD4s and high viral loads, high need and poor uptake of PrEP among transgender MSM, and emerging data on the value of anal pap screening to prevent invasive anal SCC in people living with HIV.
Oncology and transplant ID papers discussed the value of ID consultation in candidemia, marabivir for CMV viremia after transplantation, chlorhexidine to prevent CLABSI in oncology wards, new CMV viremia assays, T cell therapy for chronic viral infection, and oral fosfomycin for cystitis in renal transplant patients.
Antimicrobial stewardship and infection control research this month discussed factors associated with starting and finishing LTBI treatment among healthcare workers, what surfaces in patient rooms are actually high touch, the value of a pharmD-led intervention to reduce redundant anaerobic antibiotic therapy, congitive biases associated with UTI and ASB, N95s versus traditional masks for preventing influenza transmission in the hospital, and the association between BMI and risk of surgical site infection.
As always, feel free to share your thoughts by commenting on any of these blog posts, or reach out to me directly by email at contact.idjournalclub@gmail.com or via Twitter at @Cortes_Penfield.