In the last ten years, 'diagnostic stewardship' has emerged as a core principle of good clinical practice whose implementation impacts both the individual patient and public health at large. In this episode of Communicable, hosts Angela Huttner and Annie Joseph invite two experts in the field, Daniel Morgan (Maryland, USA) and Valerie Vaughn (Utah,…

It’s World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) and we have prepared a special episode in light of that. In this week's Communicable, Navaneeth Narayanan and Thomas Tängdén host Aula Abbara (London, UK), Guido Granata (Rome, Italy) and Tuomas Aro (Helsinki, Finland) to discuss the phenomenon of AMR in conflict and crisis zones. They elaborate on how difficult…

Once confined to the tropics, dengue is spreading via its vector, the Aedes mosquito, to more temperate regions, causing increases in global morbidity, mortality and cost. In 2019, the WHO recognised dengue as one of the top ten global health threats alongside climate change and antimicrobial resistance [1]. In this episode of Communicable, Annie J…

A child in remission. A sudden fever. The antibiotics stop working. In this episode at The AMR Studio we dive into the hidden link between cancer and antibiotic resistance: why cancer patients are especially vulnerable, how antibiotics in oncology affect resistance, and what researchers are doing to change it. In this episode, communications intern…

In this episode of Communicable, Erin McCreary and Angela Huttner are joined by Barbara Trautner (St. Louis, USA) and Valéry Lavergne (Vancouver, Canada), the co-chairs and leading authors of the first IDSA guideline on complicated urinary tract infection (cUTI), which was published a few months ago [1]. Together, they discuss the process of develo…

Contrary to popular belief, peer review has only recently become an integral step in scientific publishing. Currently seen by many as a badge of honour ensuring valid, innovative and honest research, peer review seems in reality to be increasingly thankless, exploitative, and sometimes invisible. How did we get here? In this episode of Communicable…

In this second-ever collaboration between SIDP’s Breakpoints and ESCMID’s Communicable podcasts, hosts Erin McCreary and Angela Huttner invite the two principal investigators and visionaries who spearheaded the Bacteraemia Antibiotic Length Actually Needed for Clinical Effectiveness (BALANCE) trial, Nick Daneman and Rob Fowler (Sunnybrook Health Sc…

In this episode of Communicable, Angela Huttner and Erin McCreary invite two titans of vaccinology, Barney Graham (Atlanta, USA), former deputy director of the NIH NIAID Vaccine Research Center and architect of the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, and Gary Kobinger (Galveston, USA), leading virologist in the development of the first effective Ebola …

Fungal infections and disease have long been overlooked in terms of healthcare burden, with poor diagnostics and limited options for treatment and management. In 2022, the WHO published its first Fungal Priority Pathogens List as an effort to establish a global prioritised framework that addresses unmet research and development needs in fungal dise…

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, Aus…

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 t…

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 t…

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 resource…

Happy start of the summer, dear listeners! In this episode before our break, we interview Professor Tove Fall, a veterinarian turned epidemiologist working to unveil the molecular connections determining health and sickness. We learn about her path, how she developed her career to fit her interests and strong skills, and how important study design …

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…

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 penic…

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 …

In this episode, we bring you an interview with Professor Elias Arnér from the Karolinska Institute. After a long international career in redox biology, Professor Arnér became CEO of Thioredoxin Systems, the company behind a potential new antibiotic with a novel target and mode of action: EbsArgent. We explore his background, the lessons he has lea…

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 fr…

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 an…

Welcome to episode 60th! YES, 60!! Celebrate this rounded number with us and Prof. Till Bachmann in an inspiring interview where we learn Till’s journey, explore how diagnostics are an essential part of managing AMR and infection treatment, and revisit the DOSA project. This multidisciplinary & one-health-focused multi-country endeavor provides sol…

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 healthca…

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, a…

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 refle…

Welcome to a new episode of The AMR Studio! This month, we bring you an interview with MD Dr. Vance Fowler, co-lead of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (a.k.a. ARLG). In our chat, we learn how Dr. Fowler came into AMR, the decades-long work they’ve been doing with MRSA research, and the ins and outs of the ARLG. In the news section, we…

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 F…

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 Konstan…

Welcome to 2025! We are so happy to be starting one more year with you, our 8th year! On this episode, we bring you the story and work of Dr. Evangelos Mourkas, a veterinarian-turned-computational biologist who loves to also do the field work himself! In this interview, we dive deep into his motivators, reflections, and how campylobacter can be use…

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, M…

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 …

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’ …

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). Togeth…

Hitting this November month with a very relevant topic, Global Governance! In this episode, you can listen to an interview with had with Prof. Olivier Rubin, from Roskilde University in Denmark, about the social dimensions of AMR, and how AMR is a so-called “creeping crisis” globally. Olivier has years of experience researching slow-onset crisis su…

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 Hos…

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 fraudul…

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 di…

We are finally back from our looooong break! Welcome, to another episode of The AMR studio, now again with co-host Elin Fermer at the mic after her maternity break. We are so thrilled to bring you our conversation with Eva Krockow, a psychologist working with decision making, risk communications, and language. We learn about her interests and path,…

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 joi…

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 Pate…

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 sci…

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 human…

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 …

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…

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, Sloven…

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 (outg…

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…

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 & deve…

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…

Coming to your right live from ESCMID Global 2024! Last month, the we participated in the most massive conference ever, ESCMID Global (previously known as ECCMID) in beautiful Barcelona, this year counting with 18.000 registered attendees (yes, you read that right!). We took the opportunity to sit down to catch a breath, and catch up, with some fri…

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. aure…