Communicable

Ethics in the field of infectious disease can be a delicate interplay between treating the individual patient and protecting the collective health of a society. Sometimes these two mandates go hand in hand; at other times they can appear to be in conflict. In this episode of Communicable , Dr. Angela Huttner invites Drs. Zeb Jamrozik (Melbourne, Australia) and Beenish Syed (Karachi, Pakistan), two...

Fluoroquinolones (FQs) are valuable given their broad-spectrum activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria and their high penetration into various tissues. Yet FQs have also caused concern, with some market withdrawals, important and sometimes long-lasting adverse drug events, and substantial collateral effects on the microbiota. In this episode of Communicable , hosts Emily McDonald...

The adaptability of fungi to warmer temperatures is an obvious consequence of climate change. Perhaps less obvious is the role climate change has played on fungal pathogens emerging as a global health concern. While humans are mostly protected from fungal infections by our immune system and body temperature, a warming global climate could subvert the status quo. Some fungi are already adapted to w...

Meningitis remains a major global health threat, with an estimated 2.5 million cases each year; of these, one in six results in death and one in five in long-term disabilities. Although meningitis “can strike anyone, anywhere in the world,” outbreaks disproportionately impact low- and middle-income countries, where diagnostic and treatment resources are limited. In efforts to address this, WHO lau...

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) was long considered not to be a sexually transmitted infection (STI), and treatment was only for women to bear. That was the convention at least until Catriona Bradshaw and her team at the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre published their groundbreaking clinical trial results earlier this year, demonstrating that treating male partners of women with BV prevented recurrence in...

Editors of CMI Comms , Josh Davis, Erin McCreary and Emily McDonald return for round 2 taking turns to summarise and discuss late-breaker trials presented at ESCMID Global 2025 in Vienna, and whether or not these trials should change your practice. Part 2 covers the ALABAMA trial exploring the safety of penicillin-allergy delabelling using the penicillin allergy assessment pathway, the SOLARIO tri...

This episode of Communicable takes on a special format where editors of CMI Comms , Marc Bonten, Josh Davis, Erin McCreary, Emily McDonald, all clinical trialists in their own right, take turns to summarise and discuss late-breaker trials presented at ESCMID Global 2025 in Vienna. These include the CloCeBa trial on Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia treatment options, the Taper V trial on vancomyci...

In this first-ever collaboration between Communicable and Breakpoints , the podcast of the US Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists, hosts Angela Huttner (Geneva, Switzerland) and Erin McCreary (Pittsburgh, USA) join trial investigators Josh Davis (Newcastle, Australia) and Steve Tong (Melbourne, Australia) to unpack the first results coming from the SNAP adaptive platform trial, which were r...

In this episode of Communicable , hosts Angela Huttner and Annie Joseph join experts Kerrigan McCarthy of South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases and Natasha Crowcroft of the World Health Organisation to discuss the resurgence of measles as a consequence of misinformation campaigns and waning vaccination rates, how to diagnose and manage active measles cases, and post-exposure...

ESCMID Global, ESCMID’s flagship congress, kicks off this Friday in Vienna. In light of that, Angela Huttner and Thomas Tängdén sit down with ESCMID leadership, President Robert Skov and Immediate-Past President Annelies Zinkernagel in this episode of Communicable . Together they discuss the roles of medical societies like ESCMID in shaping healthcare policy, the importance of scientific communica...

Communicable returns to the topic of gender dynamics in medicine in the second half of this special. This round, Angela Huttner wants to hear from the men, CMI Comms editors Marc Bonten, Josh Davis, Navaneeth Narayanan and Thomas Tängdén, about tackling issues like the evolving expectations at home and work, the impact of parental-leave policies, and the systemic biases that continue to shape care...

In honour of International Women's Day, Communicable releases the first of a two-part special on gender dynamics within the fields of infectious diseases and clinical microbiology. Moderated by Angela Huttner, part 1 focuses on the women's perspectives, featuring CMI Comms editors Erin McCreary, Annie Joseph, and Huttner herself, who together reflect on personal experiences of gender bias in the w...

Several publications have described wondrous therapeutic effects of faecal microbiota transplant (FMT) on Clostridioides difficile infection. Yet the recent randomised trial assessing FMT in US veterans was terminated early for futility. In this episode, hosts Angela Huttner and Marc Bonten delve into the history, application, and complexities of FMT with experts Maria Vehreschild (Frankfurt Unive...

Despite being preventable and curable, tuberculosis remains a major global health threat, infecting over 10 million people and claiming more than 1 million lives every year. In this episode of Communicable , hosts Angela Huttner and Navaneeth Narayanan discuss tuberculosis with experts Lorenzo Guglielmetti of Doctors without Borders and Olha Konstantynovska of Kharkiv National University, Ukraine....

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) affect millions globally daily, and multidrug-resistant strains are complicating treatment. Hosts Angela Huttner and Josh Davis welcome experts Dr. Teodora Elvira Wi from WHO and Professor Catriona Bradshaw from Monash University to discuss critical issues surrounding ‘super gonorrhoea,’ chlamydia, syphilis, Mycoplasma genitalium , and bacterial vaginosis. Th...

Rising anti-vaccine sentiment and dissemination of misinformation are threats to public health. In the US, calls to revoke certain public health mandates have been proposed by likely members of the incoming administration, among them vaccination against polio. The fourth instalment of the Nightmare Series is both a cautionary tale and an effort to preserve and share clinical expertise on how to di...

The last episode of the year carries a special end-of-year message from the CMI Comms editors and replays the very first episode of Communicable aired on 10 May 2024, in which editors Angela Huttner, Marc Bonten, and Erin McCreary discuss late-breaker clinical trials presented at ESCMID Global 2024 in Barcelona, providing insights into the trials’ designs, results, and implications. The DOTS trial...

The topic of climate change can engender a ‘doom and gloom’ narrative, as many climate and health consequences are already manifesting. Our host, Dr. Navaneeth Narayanan is joined by two ID physicians passionate about climate change and sustainable clinical practice, Dr. Shreya Doshi (Washington DC, US) and Dr. Laura Jung (Leipzig, Germany). Together they discuss new trends in infectious diseases...

Wastewater surveillance is a powerful epidemiological tool that “mirrors our life,” and has gained wide attention in recent years due to its application during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hosts this week, Drs. Navaneeth Narayanan and Emily McDonald, are joined by two wastewater surveillance experts, Dr. Nasreen Hassoun-Kheir of Geneva University Hospitals, a WHO Collaborating Centre on antimicrobia...

Substandard and falsified (SF) antimicrobials are a neglected global health problem and have been implicated as drivers of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Substandard medicines are authorized medical products that fail to meet either their quality standards or their specifications, whereas falsified medicines are those that deliberately and fraudulently misrepresent their identity, composition or...

The market of predatory publishing is as lucrative as it is unethical. Predatory journals are disguised as legitimate entities, and prey on both early-career academics and the naïve. In this episode of Communicable , hosts Angela Huttner and Marc Bonten are joined by Editors-in-chief Ursula Hofer ( Lancet Infect Dis ) and Leonard Leibovici ( CMI ) to discuss the various schemes of the ‘Wild West’...

Enterococci are commensal microbes, part of the healthy microflora populating the human gut. But they are also opportunistic pathogens and notorious nosocomial agents with intrinsic traits that promote their pathogenesis and make them difficult to kill. In the third instalment of the Nightmare Series, hosts Angela Huttner and Thomas Tängdén are joined by enterococcal experts Kimberly Kline (Univer...

Carbapenemase producers are a nightmare for clinicians. Not only are they resistant to carbapenems, a last resort β-lactam antibiotic, they are notorious for developing multidrug and pandrug resistances resulting in limited to no treatment options.  In this episode of Communicable , hosts Angela Huttner and Thomas Tängdén sit down with Dr. David Paterson (National University of Singapore) and Dr....

On the verge of a post-antibiotic reality, there is an urgent clinical need for new antibiotics. Luckily, new candidates are in the pipeline and older agents are getting a second breath of life through combination therapy.    In this episode of Communicable , host Erin McCreary invites Dr. Markus Zeitlinger of the University of Vienna (Austria) and scientific expert for the European Medicines Agen...

The current H5N1 avian flu outbreak in poultry and dairy cows in the US has raised the alarm on bird flu and its transmission risk across species. At present, the virus has infected 100 million birds across 48 states and 196 dairy herds across 14 states. Luckily, the H5N1 avian flu, which is very lethal in birds, does not transmit easily into humans nor does it generally cause severe and systemic...