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Candida and staphylococcus are two fairly common isolates of bloodstream infections, as well as part of our own microbiome. These two organisms also instill the fear of God into me, given how sticky they can be. I’ve talked a lot about staphylococcus and endocarditis in general, so candida endocarditis gets the spotlight for this post.
Robert Koch is probably one of the most important people in all of medicine. Arguably one of the fathers of microbiology, he popularized the idea of his “postulates” which are a set of criteria designed to assess whether a microorganism causes disease (1). His most well known work is with the bacteria bacillus anthracis aka
Echinocandins. This is the drug we use mostly on the inpatient side for invasive candidiasis. The most well known is micafungin, but analdafungin is another option that is also commonly used. Besides resistance, the issue with echinocandins are the fact they are intravenous drugs, which makes administration of it easy on the inpatient side but
At the end of the 19th Century, the British hospital in Valletta, housed in the Hospital of the Knights (which had the longest ward in Europe), was full of soldiers ill with the disease, many of whom are invalided to Britain. Nearly half were discharged because of complications of arthritis and their pensions were a
Diabetic foot infections are one of the most feared complications of diabetes, since it is the most tangible consequence of the disease. While peripheral vascular disease and neuropathy may take a while, having a foot infection leading to osteomyelitis and possible amputations is disfiguring, costly, and has an impact on a person’s quality of life.
In part two of “Ticks and Us” we look at two related viruses that come from ticks and lead to the same symptoms as any tick-borne illness, namely flu-like illness with thrombocytopenia and transaminitis: the Heartland and severe fever and thrombocytopenia syndrome virus! Heartland Virus: The heartland virus is part of the Phenuviridae family, genus
Ehrlichiosis is the name of infections caused by obligate intracellular bacteria that are part of the Anaplasmatacae family (1). 3 different genera tend to cause disease: Ehrlichia chaffeensis, E. ewingii, and Anaplasma phagocytophilum. These organisms tend to be part of the Rickettsiacae family which require eukaryotic cells to grow (4). Leukocytes tend to be the
Unfortunately, i have not being able to figure out how to rotate some of the images on WordPress, despite my google docs being in the correct configuration. Hence, some tables are rotated the wrong way. Do know I tried to fix it. I have been putting off writing about this since the immunology behind this
Well, this is new territory. While I typically talk about esoteric/topics infectious diseases docs should be aware of (see: my recent posts on complicated SAB, prior topics tackling dosing of vancomycin and beta-lactamase inhibitors, and acute katayama fever, as examples) I occasionally delve into other more mundane topics (see: neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio). This one is a
It seems I can never get around talking about staphylococcus aureus. I believe it was Paul Sax who mentioned that an infectious disease fellowship is essentially a staphylococcus fellowship, since you see all different types of complications. Many institutions have implemented automatic infectious disease consultation for anyone with staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB), as it has
Dr. Germophile 