Communicable

Only known to us since 2008, Candida auris is an emerging fungal pathogen spreading quickly around the world; alarmingly, it is most commonly found in healthcare settings. C. auris sets itself apart from other Candida species with its unique tolerance to high saline and temperature environments and propensity to develop antifungal resistances that promote its survival in hospitals and healthcare f...

Once considered endemic only to tropical and subtropical climates such as Southeast Asia and northern Australia, melioidosis is expanding to non-endemic areas such as the southern US. Climate change is impacting infectious diseases, melioidosis being no exception. Now is the time to inform and prepare: as this Communicable episode’s title indicates, melioidosis is going global. Join hosts Angela H...

Responsible for 1.3 million deaths and 2.2 million new infections per year, viral hepatitis is the second leading cause of morbidity and mortality amongst all infectious diseases, just behind tuberculosis.    Hosts Angela Huttner and Oana Sandulescu welcome special guest and leading hepatitis expert, Professor Mojca Matičič, MD, PhD (Ljubljana, Slovenia), to refresh your knowledge on the pathogene...

The ‘I’ (intermediate susceptibility) in a EUCAST-guided antibiogram never meant impending resistance to your antibiotic. It was never meant to make you find the one ‘S’ (invariably a carbapenem) and use it instead—even if many clinicians did.  In this episode of Communicable, hosts Marc Bonten and Angela Huttner welcome Profs. Christian Giske (outgoing chair) and Sören Gatermann (newly elected ch...

Hosts Angela Huttner & Erin McCreary welcome Prof. David Paterson (Singapore) and Prof. Josh Davis (Newcastle, Australia) to discuss the design and results of the BLING-3 trial, which compared continuous infusion of beta-lactam antibiotics to standard intermittent dosing in 7000 critically ill patients across 104 intensive-care units. In unadjusted analyses, the trial did not show a statistica...

What are WHO's most wanted bacterial pathogens in 2024? Hosts Angela Huttner & Oana Sandulescu welcome guests Dr. Hatim Sati of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Dr. Erin Duffy (CARB-X) to discuss WHO’s new Priority Pathogens List. Developed by WHO and a panel of global experts, the List identifies the ‘top’ bacteria for which research & development are of critical, high, and medium...

In this episode, hosts Josh Davis (Newcastle, Australia) and Angela Huttner (Geneva, Switzerland) interview the phage ‘microbiologist-clinician duo’, Drs. Shawna McCallin and Lorenz Leitner (Balgrist Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland). They explore the history of phages, the process of bringing phage therapy to a patient, potential resistance to phages, availability of individualized therapy versus ph...

CMI Communications editors Angela Huttner, Marc Bonten, and Erin McCreary discuss late-breaker clinical trials presented at ESCMID Global (ECCMID) in Barcelona, providing insights into the trials’ designs, results, and implications. The DOTS trial compared two doses of long-acting dalbavancin to standard of care in patients with complicated S. aureus bacteremia. GAME-CHANGER compared cefiderocol t...