Editors in Conversation American Society for Microbiology

As many of you are likely aware, May is recognized as Women’s Health Care Month by the National Cervical Cancer Coalition, and this year, the CDC has identified the week of May 14th as National Women’s Health Week. So, what better way to recognize these national events on the podcast than to talk about diagnostics for a number of extremely common and uniquely female issues – of course, I’m talking about infectious causes of vaginitis and vaginosis. Classically, diagnosis of these infections has been done at the point-of-care using wet mount microscopy and assessment for various clinical criteria, all approaches associated with some interpretive subjectivity, and let’s say imperfect performance characteristics. As a result, molecular solutions for detection of the various pathogens associated with vaginitis and vaginosis are now increasingly available for use in clinical laboratories, and also at the point-of-care, and as is the post-COVID trend, a number of these assays, including the one we are going to discuss today, can be performed on both clinician and patient self-collected samples
 
Guests: Dr. Rebecca Lillis - Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at Louisiana State University Health Science Center and the Medical Director of the LSU-CrescentCare Sexual Health Center in New Orleans. Dr. Barbara Van Der Pol - Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Links: Clinical Evaluation of a New Molecular Test for the Detection of Organisms Causing Vaginitis and Vaginosis  
This episode of Editors in Conversation is brought to you by the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and hosted by JCM Editor in Chief, Alex McAdam and Dr. Elli Theel. JCM is available at https://jcm.asm.org and on https://twitter.com/JClinMicro.
Visit journals.asm.org/journal/jcm to read articles and/or submit a manuscript.
Follow JCM on Twitter via @JClinMicro

As the number of immunocompromised patients rise in our hospitals, the presentation of severe infections caused by HSV and CMV are rising. Most importantly, lack of response and documented resistance are becoming more frequently observed.
Topics discussed: The clinical problems caused by resistant HSV and CMV infections. Mechanisms of resistance in these organisms. Insights into novel therapeutic approaches to treat resistant gonococcal infections. Guests: Christine M. Johnston, MD, MPH - Associate Professor Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Adjunct Associate Professor, Virology Division, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Roy Chemaly, MD, MPH - Professor of Medicine, Chief Infection Control Officer, Director, Clinical Virology Research, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX. This episode is brought to you by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal available at aac.asm.org. If you plan to publish in AAC, ASM Members get up to 50% off publishing fees. Visit asm.org/membership to sign up.
Visit journals.asm.org/journal/aac to browse issues and/or submit a manuscript.

Susceptibility testing for piperacillin-tazobactam has undergone rapid evolution, largely driven by some surprising results from the MERINO trial, which compared the efficacy of piperacillin-tazobactam and meropenem for treatment of patients with ceftriaxone-resistant E. coli or Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteremia. We discuss how the results of the MERINO trial led to reconsideration of breakpoints for pipercillin-tazobactam at the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute, or CLSI, how the breakpoints were changed, and how well commercial platforms perform piperacillin-tazobactam testing using FDA or CLSI breakpoints. Spoiler alert: the news isn’t great.

If you are interested in beta-lactam/beta lactamase combinations, you should check out the previous episode of this podcast, hosted by our friend Dr. Cesar Arias, the Editor-in-Chief of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. Cesar and the guests did a great review of recent developments in this fast-moving area.
Guests: Dr. Trish Simner - Director of the Medical Bacteriology and Infectious Disease Sequencing Laboratories, Johns Hopkins Hospital Dr. Romney Humphries - Director of the Division of Laboratory Medicine and the Medical Director of the Microbiology Laboratory at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

The Center of Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) has categorized emergent resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae as an “urgent” public health problem. We discuss the emerging problem of gonorrhea and implications for public health with experts in the field
Topics discussed: The clinical implications of resistance to B-lactams and quinolones in Neisseria gonorrhoeae Mechanisms of resistance in these organisms Insights into therapeutic approaches to treat resistant gonococcal infections. Guests: William M. Shafer, Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Emory University School of Medicine, Co-Director, Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center Yonatan Grad, Melvin J. and Geraldine L. Glimcher Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health This episode is brought to you by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal available at aac.asm.org. If you plan to publish in AAC, ASM Members get up to 50% off publishing fees. Visit asm.org/membership to sign up.
Visit journals.asm.org/journal/aac to browse issues and/or submit a manuscript.

We can probably all agree that any false positive test result is bad, but I think it’s safe to say that some false positives, like a false positive HIV test for example, is much more anxiety provoking than others. And when it comes to HIV, there have been a number of key advances in the field over the past decade, include the development of improved diagnostics and optimized algorithmic approaches, all of which have allowed for earlier detection of infected patients, and particularly those with acute HIV. Among these advancements has been the development of 4th and 5th generation serologic assays, which offer multiple benefits over prior assay versions, but unfortunately, are not immune to the possibility of false positive results. So, confirmatory test remain a necessary – the challenge though is that depending on the institution and environment, the turnaround time for such confirmatory testing can be prolonged, leaving patients and clinicians in a kind of diagnostic limbo. So, is there a way to minimize the risk of false positive first-tier HIV serologic results? And that is the question will be the focus of our discussion today.
Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/kq61A3Jz67U
Guests: 
Dr. Shivanjali Shankaran - Assistant Professor and ID Clinician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Rush Medical Center in Chicago Dr. Beverly Sha - Professor of Medicine, also in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Rush Medical Center This episode of Editors in Conversation is brought to you by the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and hosted by JCM Editor in Chief, Alex McAdam and Dr. Elli Theel. 
Visit https://journals.asm.org/journal/jcm to read articles and/or submit a manuscript.
Follow EIC, Alex McAdam on twitter for JCM updates via https://twitter.com/JClinMicro and co-host, Elli Theel at https://twitter.com/ellitheelphd.
Subscribe to the podcast at https://asm.org/eic

Novel β-lactamase/β-lactamase inhibitors have become critical drugs to combat the most resistant Gram-negative infections. A series of new compounds with even more broad and potent activity are in the horizon to add to the therapeutic armamentarium. Today, we will discuss these drugs with experts in the field.
Topics discussed: BL/BLI combinations that are currently available in clinical practice. Future perspectives of BL/BLI armamentarium. Resistance developing for this class of antibiotics. Guests: Robert Bonomo. Professor, Department of Medicine, Pharmacology and Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Case Western Reserve University, Director of VA CARES Center, Cleveland, OH Patricia A. Bradford Antimicrobial Development Specialists LLC, Nyack, New York, USA This episode is brought to you by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal available at aac.asm.org. If you plan to publish in AAC, ASM Members get up to 50% off publishing fees. Visit asm.org/membership to sign up.
Visit journals.asm.org/journal/aac to browse issues and/or submit a manuscript.