Antimicrobial resistance surged along with Covid

Here’s another thing Covid has made worse: Resistance to antimicrobial medicines has risen significantly, climbing 15% in the pandemic’s first year, a new CDC report says. It was worse for some superbugs than others:

78% jump among those infected with Acinetobacter
60% rise in a fungal disease known as Candida auris
32% percent rise in infections from Enterobacterales

U.S. hospitals saw their progress against four out of six infections that patients acquired during their hospital stays reversed. In the first year of the pandemic, more than 29,400 people died from antimicrobial-resistant infections commonly associated with health care settings. Antibiotic use surged as health care providers struggled to prevent and control infection while weathering shortages in protective equipment and staffing. Patients were sicker, needing more frequent and longer use of catheters and ventilators. STAT’s Ed Silverman has more on the rates and the response.

With BA.5 rising, White House urges Americans to get Covid-19 boosters

Yes, the Omicron BA.5 variant is now dominating Covid-19 cases, but we have the vaccines and boosters, testing, and treatments to meet it, health officials said yesterday. At a White House briefing yesterday, the Biden administration urged people to strengthen their protections against Covid-19, including boosters, now that BA.5 accounts for two-thirds of U.S. infections. The variant is more adept than other Omicron versions at infecting people who’ve previously had Covid-19 or been vaccinated. At the same time, STAT’s Andrew Joseph points out, waning immunity leaves people more susceptible to infections, even as vaccine-elicited protection against more severe outcomes is broadly maintained.

“We can prevent serious illness, we can keep people out of the hospital and especially out of the ICU, we can save lives,” Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said. “Even in the face of BA.5, the tools we have continue to work.”

CDC advises doctors to watch for parechovirus

The CDC has issued a health advisory encouraging health care providers to test young children for parechovirus infection after reports since May of the disease in newborns and infants. Clinicians are being asked to watch for severe illness in infants with fever, sepsis-like syndrome, seizures, or meningitis without another known cause. Lab tests analyze cerebrospinal fluid to confirm a diagnosis.

Most kids will have had parechovirus infection by the time they turn 1 and nearly all will have been infected by age 2, Kevin Messacar, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, told STAT’s Helen Branswell. Severe cases are rare and generally seen in only very young babies; those who develop severe encephalitis can have permanent neurological deficits.

Case numbers aren’t tracked, CDC said, so it’s not known how this year compares to other years. Messacar said the earlier-than-usual parechovirus cases — which are typically seen in summer and fall — might be another example of viruses returning in unusual ways (see Helen’s story).

Closer look: Pioneer patients band together for the future of brain-computer interfaces

(Maddie Mcgarvey for STAT)

When Ian Burkhart (above), paralyzed from a spinal cord injury, was asked to join a study testing a brain-computer interface, he had no other patient to ask what it might be like. The scientists answered many of his questions, but the real experts — patients who knew how to shower or sleep with the device, or whether he would feel it in his brain — were nowhere in sight.

He joined the trial in 2014 anyway, becoming one of 12 to 15 people around the world to have a BCI. Now he’s created the BCI Pioneers Coalition with his peers, whose numbers have nearly doubled since Burkhart received his device. “There’s no substitute for that,” Burkhart told STAT’s Elissa Welle, reflecting on the peer mentor he never had. But the group has more in mind: “We can make sure that these devices are going in the right direction," he said. Read more.

Long Covid patients try unproven ‘blood washing’ treatments to ease symptoms

How do you treat a condition when you don’t know what causes it? People desperate to escape long Covid — lingering fatigue, breathing problems, memory struggles, and muscle weakness — are traveling to clinics promising costly “blood washing” or other unproven treatments to end their sometimes debilitating symptoms, a new report in BMJ says. Lured by social media claims of cures, some spend their life savings but return no better.

The investigation followed patients to private clinics in Cyprus, Germany, and Switzerland that offered apheresis, in which blood is removed, filtered for lipids and inflammatory proteins, and returned to the body, along with anticoagulant drugs targeting the microclots found in Covid patients. There’s no peer-reviewed evidence that apheresis and anticoagulation reduce microclots. “As we don’t know how they form, we cannot tell if this treatment will stop microclots from recurring,” Robert Ariens of the University of Leeds School of Medicine notes.

Giving birth adds up to nearly $19,000, with $3,000 out of pocket

Having a baby is expensive, even for people with health insurance, a new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation reports. Moving past just the costs of delivery, the researchers compared three years of health care claims for women of reproductive age who gave birth to claims for women who had not given birth. Women who gave birth spent $18,865 more on total health care over three years compared to other women, including $2,854 paid out of pocket. Women who delivered by cesarean section spent an average of $26,280 more, including $3,214 out of pocket. Those who had a vaginal delivery spent an average of $14,768 more, including $2,655 out of pocket.

These out-of-pocket costs can be a hardship for families taking on the costs of caring for a child, the authors note, especially if a parent is on unpaid leave.

What to read around the web today

Pig organ transplants inch closer with testing in the dead, Associated Press
America’s racist maternal mortality crisis traces back to Philadelphia, Philadelphia Inquirer
Agios Pharma CEO Jackie Fouse to step down, as a former Alexion executive takes over, STAT
Prognosis: Losing it, Bloomberg
Opinion: Opioid-pushing executives should get jail time, not fines, STAT