A new surveillance study in the United States indicates that individuals recovering from recent COVID-19 infections have significantly contributed to the rise in hospital-onset methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia during the pandemic period. Published in the Open Forum Infectious Diseases, the research was conducted collaboratively by experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and several state public health departments. They scrutinized incident MRSA blood isolate data from 2005 through 2022, collected from residents in six states: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Minnesota, New York, and Tennessee.
The primary objective was to understand the pandemic’s effect on different types of MRSA bacteremia, namely, community-associated (CA), healthcare-associated community-onset (HACO), and hospital-onset (HO). The collected data revealed a general trend: MRSA bacteremia incidence fell from 32.6 per 100,000 population in 2005 to 15.7 in 2016, then climbed slightly to 17.0 in 2019, and hovered between 15.6 to 16.2 from 2020 to 2022. However, the data also uncovered a varied impact of the pandemic on the incidence of each MRSA bacteremia type.
Interestingly, HACO MRSA incidence saw a downward trend, going from 18.7 in 2005 to 10.2 in 2017, slightly increasing to 10.8 in 2019 but plunging to a low of 9.0 in 2021. A contrary pattern was observed for HO MRSA bacteremia, which, after a substantial drop from 2005 through 2014, remained relatively stable until 2019, only to experience a dramatic 40% surge compared to 2019 levels in 2021. During 2020 – 2022, between 18.2% to 21.8% of HO MRSA bacteremia cases were identified in patients who had recently suffered from COVID-19 infections. After eliminating these cases, the incidence fell within the anticipated range, implying a significant contribution from COVID-related hospitalizations to the increase in HO MRSA bacteremia.
Findings from another study published in BMC Infectious Diseases indicate a correlation between the use of the antiviral remdesivir (RDV) and reduced mortality among COVID-19 patients. The analysis was based on electronic health records (EHRs) of patients in three Spanish healthcare systems from January 2021 through March 2022.
An insightful study from South Korea suggests that the use of antibiotics within the first year of a girl’s life could be associated with an early onset of puberty. Researchers from two university hospitals analyzed the antibiotic use in a large cohort of 322,731 children and followed them until the age of 10 for boys and 9 for girls.
In alarming news from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the CDC, a pause has been recommended on the use of Valneva’s chikungunya vaccine in individuals over 60 as officials look into the reports of severe adverse events, some involving neurological or cardiac conditions.
Lastly, Virginia’s chronic wasting disease (CWD) management area has been extended to include Rockingham County following detections of the disease within a 10-mile radius of the county border in West Virginia, as reported by the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR).