INFECTIOUS DISEASE
This preventable disease could be fatal if not immediately treated.
The occurrence of invasive aspergillosis, a fatal systemic fungal
infection, has increased drastically over the past few decades, and the
death toll has risen by more than 300%.
Foot infection, a common and serious complication of diabetes,
increases the risk of hospitalization, amputation, and death.
Some patients may prefer a test that affords anonymity and/or provides fast results.
Many live vaccines have the potential to cause infection in an immunosuppressed patient.
In more than 20% of cases, the etiology of this life-threatening disorder is unknown.
Ten percent of hospitalized patients in the U.S. develop a hospital-associated infection.
Sepsis is a complication that can develop from any serious infection.
The flu is a contagious viral infection that circulates each year during the period from October to May.
Many highly toxic agents used for treatment worldwide are
unavailable here because of low occurrence of such diseases in this
country.
These infections originate from a number of
different sources and can be difficult to manage.
Vaccination of individuals who are at risk for complications from
influenza and invasive pneumococcal disease is a vital public health
strategy.
Listeriosis is a serious, potentially fatal infection caused by
Listeria species.
If recognized and treated with antibiotics, this tick-borne infection is curable.
With infestations becoming more common, cutaneous and systemic reactions to bites are generally treated symptomatically.
Transmitted through mosquito bites, prevention and control
are the only effective ways to prevent infection-associated mortality.
Management of latent and active infection requires proper administration of antituberculosis agents.
Vaccination rates for all populations fall short of the Healthy People 2020 objectives.
The Healthy People 2020 objectives developed by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services stress the role of preventive services
in the maintenance and improvement of the health of the American
population over the course of the next decade.
The key to successful treatment is early recognition that the infection is caused by a resistant strain of staph.
Available treatments are not always effective and are fraught with potential complications.
HACEK organisms are most often associated with infective endocarditis, accounting for up to 10% of cases.
In ambulatory care settings, 24.2 and 3.9 million visits to office-based
physicians and hospital outpatient departments, respectively, were made
in 2008 for the treatment of infectious and parasitic diseases.
Because pet-transmitted infections are uncommon, they often go unrecognized.
The pharmacist-directed stewardship program is a milestone in infectious-diseases pharmacy practice.
Lyme disease, also known as
Lyme borreliosis, is the most common vector-transmitted illness in the United States.
It is crucial to select the appropriate antimicrobial agent for the
infection being treated, with newer agents reserved for the most severe
cases.
Pharmacists must keep up with the current literature and address patients' concerns and misconceptions.
Mononucleosis is a viral infection most often caused by the Epstein-Barr
virus, one of the most common viruses that infect humans.
Fungal infections can be difficult to diagnosis, prevent, and treat. The
past decade has seen the introduction of a number of medications with a
wider range of action and fewer side effects.
This product can identify individuals whose infection was missed by tuberculin skin testing.
Three of the vaccines against the H1N1 virus are available in injectable form and one isavailable in nasal spray form; all four vaccines are monovalent. The seasonal influenza vaccine for the 2009-2010 season is atrivalent-inactivated vaccine containing A/Brisbane/59/2007 H1N1-like,A/Brisbane 10/2007 H3N2-like/B/Brisbane/60/2008-like antigens.
Quickly identifying pathogens can help improve patient outcomes and reduce health care costs.
Infectious disease has plagued humankind throughout history.
Widespread administration of immunizations in the United States have
helped eradicate such diseases as smallpox and poliomyelitis and can
help prevent other serious illnesses and complications.
In the midst of the H1N! scare, we can all be thankful is that pharmacists will continue to mitigate
the fear by their thoughtful and insightful
counseling efforts.
Long before there were antibiotics, researchers envisioned using viruses to seek out and destroy bacteria.
Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are small DNA viruses that infect epithelial tissue.
Pneumococcal infections cause an estimated 3,000 cases of meningitis, 50,000 cases of bacteremia, and 500,000 cases of pneumonia annually.
Polyomavirus infection is an emerging challengein
kidney-transplant recipients.
Candida is a genus of opportunistic pathogens that affect high-risk patients who are immunosuppressed or critically ill...
Infectious mononucleosis (IM) was first described in 1889 as glandular fever, a clinical illness characterized by fever, fatigue, abdominal discomfort, hepatosplenomegaly (enlargement of both the liver and spleen), and lymphadenopathy...
Scarlet fever is an infectious disease caused by invasion of the upper respiratory tract by the Gram-positive bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes .
Infectious mononucleosis (IM) was first described in 1889 as glandular fever, a clinical illness characterized by fever, fatigue, abdominal discomfort, hepatosplenomegaly (enlargement of both the liver and spleen), and lymphadenopathy.
Vaccines are medical miracles, saving more lives and preventing more deaths than any other medical advance in the last century.
1 Approximately 750,000 patients develop sepsis each year.
Patients who suffer from certain types of heart conditions are at risk for developing infective endocarditis (IE) after undergoing invasive dental procedures, according to the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Dental Association (ADA).
Obtaining the knowledge and skills required to perform disease-prevention patient interventions is becoming increasingly more important for pharmacists and other health care professionals.
Antimicrobial stewardship is a marriage of infection control and judicious antimicrobial use whose primary goals are to optimize clinical outcomes and to minimize the emergence of antimicrobial resistance.
Pneumonia is an infectious inflammation of the lung by bacteria, viruses, and other organisms.
The American Society of Microbiology and the Soap and Detergent Association studied the washing habits of more than 6,000 people and found that Americans are even less likely to wash their hands after visiting a public bathroom than they were two years ago.
Approximately 39.5 million people worldwide are infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Pharyngitis is an inflammation of the pharynx, the area in the back of the throat. This inflammation causes the symptom of a sore throat. Although most infectious causes of sore throat are due to viruses, about 5% to 10% of pharyngitis cases result from a bacterial infection.
Many Cancers Signal HIV/AIDS More infection-related cancers result from immunodeficiencies than previously thought, according to a meta-analysis reported in Lancet .
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has been a predominant pathogen in health care settings for more than 40 years.
Genes May Have Role in Colorectal and Prostate Cancers Several studies suggest there may be a common genetic link to the development of colorectal and prostate cancers.
A South African study published in Lancet found that HIV-positive mothers who exclusively breast-fed their babies could likely cut HIV transmission in half.
New Drug to Treat Advanced Breast Cancer The FDA has approved lapatinib (Tykerb, GlaxoSmithKline), a new molecular entity to be used in combination with capectabine (Xeloda, Roche Laboratories), for patients with advanced, metastatic breast cancer that is HER2 positive.
Bacterial skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) collectively refer to several microbial invasions of the skin layers (epidermis, dermis, and subcutaneous tissues), inducing a host response.
Number of New Cancer Patients Expected to Double The number of new cancer patients is expected to more than double in the United States over the next half-century from 1.
Influenza is a major public health menace, infecting 5% to 20% of American residents per year and causing about 200,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths each year in the United States.
Data from the 2000 to 2003 National Health Interview Surveys show that 23.2% of the adults 55 and older were in fair or poor health.