Editors in Conversation

2024 was a very active year on research in antimicrobial resistance, highlighted by an impactful and high level political declaration to combat antimicrobial resistance by the United Nations. In this episode, trainees from NIH-funded training program (T32) on antimicrobial resistance will help me discuss the most relevant research on the field in the year 2024. Welcome to editors in conversation!...

Looking for a dynamic and rewarding career? Learn what it means to be a Clinical Microbiology Laboratory Director and the necessary steps to get there. It's a diverse job encompassing infectious diseases diagnostic testing, patient care, teaching, and research. This episode is geared for those who are interested in pursuing (or already have) a Ph. D. or M.D. Guests: Alexandra Bryson, Ph. D. Andrea...

Lack of access to antibiotics including those with enhanced activity against multidrug-resistant organisms is a major barrier to combat antimicrobial resistance, particularly in the developing world. Furthermore, discovering and making available new antimicrobial agents against the most pressing antibiotic-resitant organisms is a challenge due to multiple barriers. The Global Antibiotic Research &...

So you want validated, at-home, self-collected swabs for STI testing… Here's what you need to know!  Sexually transmitted infection rates continue to climb across the US and while testing for these diseases is widely available, for the most part it requires the patient to go to a local clinic to collect and submit their sample for testing. But, is that really necessary, especially from a test accu...

The second High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) took place in New York on 26 September 2024 as the principal official, health-focused event during the UN General Assembly high-level week. The intergovernmental negotiations for the declaration were co-facilitated by Malta and Barbados. A political declaration for the meeting was produced highlighting the fact that AMR will cause eve...

The American Society for Microbiology is launching a new journal, ASM Case Reports. The journal is already accepting submissions and will begin publishing in January of 2025. We discuss ASM Case Reports and what you can expect from this new journal. Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/zHdZL0PYTuE Some of the questions we will discuss include: What is the scope of ASM Case Reports? What makes a ca...

Heteroresistance is a phenomenon that has been well characterized for many years. However, we are only now starting to understand its mechanistic basis. Indeed, the manner how bacteria respond to antibiotics is complex and phenomena such as persistance, tolerance may be overlapping with heteroresistance. Furthermore, heteroresistance seems to be common in real clinical scenarios and understanding...

Join Dr. Ben Pinsky and Dr. Greg Berry as they dissect recent news stories, including the USDA's testing for H5N1 in ground beef and a surprising bubonic plague case in Oregon. They also tackle the resurgence of measles in the U.S., the local reappearance of malaria, and a curious study on Neosporin's potential to prevent viral infections. Overview: H5N1 Influenza Virus: Dr. Ben Pinsky provides an...

The pipeline of antibiotic discovery is a major necessity due to the continuous evolution of resistance to currently used antimicrobials. This pipeline faces important challenges due to the lack of investment on antimicrobial research in the private sector and an economic model that discourages investment. In the last few years, however, encouraging signs are occurring but major gaps still remain....

The European alchemists of the 12th century sought to find the philosopher's stone, a substance that would transmute base metals, such as lead, into precious metals, such as silver and gold. Today, we discuss whether data analysis, including machine learning, can transmute base laboratory data into precious clinical tools. We will use antimicrobial susceptibility testing as a case-study for new ap...

Antimicrobial resistance is a priority public health problem with complex roots and connotations. However, due to a lack of focus on this topic, research training programs, specifically those focused on AMR are limited. Additionally, scientific meetings that particularly highlight the science of antimicrobial resistance are scarce. We recently published a commentary that evaluates the state-of-the...

Rhodococcus infections are uncommon, however they can cause serious disease in certain patients. There are a number of challenges though when dealing with Rhodococcus infections, including the fact that much of what we know around their susceptibility profiles and the clinical management of infected individuals actually comes from a number case series and in some situations, from the veterinary li...

Phage therapy has gained a lot of traction but the challenges created by this approach have not been properly assessed at a big scale. We often read about therapy successes on isolated cases but, rarely, we read or hear about failures. AAC recently published a case series of patients who failed phage therapy. Today, we will discuss this topic with the principal investigator on the research. Topics...

The protozoan Lophomonas has been reported to be a pathogen of humans in a large number of case reports and case series. Most of these case reports describe infections of the respiratory tract. Editors in Conversation is joined by two experts to discuss this possible parasite. Some of the questions addressed include: What are the characteristics of the species in the genus Lophomonas? What are the...

Tuberculosis is one of the most deadly infectious diseases that still causes significant burden of disease, particularly in the developing world.  The emergence of resistance to first line agents severely limits the therapeutic options and threaten the ability to control dissemination of this disease. Fortunately, new drugs and regimens are now emerging as important alternatives against these orga...

A new generation of B-lactamase inhibitors is likely to reach the market in the upcoming year. These broad-spectrum inhibitors exhibit activity against the most feared class B metallo-B-lactamases maintaining the inhibition of other enzymes. Recently AAC has published three papers that describe the mechanistic bases of taniborbactam resistance among metallo-enzymes. This knowledge is crucial to un...

We managed to make it through 2023 without a major epidemic or pandemic, and as we get into the holiday spirit and look forward to the new year, some of us took a look back and picked out one of our favorite JCM paper published in 2023, which I will tell you, was no easy task as there were many of good ones to choose from! And personally, after looking through all the issues over the last year, it...

Gonorrhea remains one of the more common sexually transmitted infections. In North America, the number of reported cases has generally risen for over ten years, with interruptions in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by returns to rising rates of infection. Under the selective pressure of antimicrobial treatment, antimicrobial resistance has risen, which has led to limited options...

In the last few years we have witnessed the rise of very resistant fungal species some of them likely influenced by environmental conditions and climate change. Fortunately, there has been a bit of an explosion in the development of new antifungals and the pipeline has been strengthened in the last decade. We will have the ability to have new molecules with distinct and novel mechanisms of action...

Despite the many advances in diagnostic testing for infectious diseases, detection of Coccidoides infections continues to rely on serologic assessment for anti-fungal antibodies, and what is perhaps more astonishing is that the serologic methods we use today, such as complement fixation and immunodiffusion, were first developed about a century ago. These assays are technically challenging to maint...

Climate change is possibly the major threat that planet earth is experiencing in this century with potential catastrophic consequences. As the planet warms, the change in weather patterns is affecting the microbial ecology in such a manner that humans are facing new health threats including emerging diseases and facing species of organisms that are more likely to survive these new climatic conditi...

Fungi that are resistant to antifungal drugs have been very much in the news and even the subject of the hugely popular television program, The Last of Us. We talk with two experts in mycology and fungal susceptibility testing about the recent descriptions of terbinafine-resistant dermatophytes in the United States. Some of the questions we will address include:  • What are the manifestations of i...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to change the way we practice medicine and public health. The tools and AI approaches can substantially impact a broad range of fields from the manner we approach patient care to strategies to discover new antimicrobials, track pandemics and deploy public health measures. AAC recently published a commentary on the impact of AI in infectious diseases a...

Dr. Elli Theel and Dr. Alex McAdam discuss recent viral outbreaks with expert virologists. Recorded before a live audience at ASM Microbe 2023. Topics: What are the recent epidemiologic and diagnostic findings with Mpox?  What are the reservoirs for influenza A H5N1 and how is it transmitted to humans? Why was there such a large number of cases of human metapneumovirus this past respiratory virus...

In response to the global burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the critical role antimicrobial stewardship plays in optimizing antibiotic use and reducing the subsequent emergence of AMR, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy is excited to add a new section to the journal focused on antimicrobial stewardship studies. Combatting the devastating burden of AMR requires novel, multipronged app...