First Lyme Disease Patients in US Were Misdiagnosed with Rheumatic Fever

Karen B. Jacobson, MD, MPH, of Kaiser Permanente Northern California, presented data at IDWeek 2026 showing 58.2% of children younger than five years exposed to active hepatitis B in the home were exposed by someone other than their birth mother, a risk maternal screening alone would miss under the CDC’s revised birth dose recommendation.

In an ECOSPOR III analysis, all-cause hospitalization by week 4 fell to 3.4% with fecal microbiota spores vs 16.1% with placebo in recurrent C difficile infection.

Exploratory SCORPIO-PEP data presented at IDWeek 2026 show household contacts with breakthrough COVID-19 on ensitrelvir had lower peak viral RNA and fewer severe symptoms than placebo recipients.

Day 42 all-cause mortality was 23.8% with oral olorofim vs 24.3% with AmBisome plus standard of care in invasive aspergillosis unsuited to azole therapy.

MBL producers rose from 20.4% to 48.6% of US carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales from 2021 to 2025, while aztreonam-avibactam stayed active against 97.7% of them.

Switching to once-daily bictegravir/lenacapavir kept adverse event rates similar to comparators and metabolic markers stable across comorbidity groups in ARTISTRY-1 and -2.

Isavuconazole had a lower liver adverse event signal than voriconazole and posaconazole, while olorofim, manogepix, and rezafungin held activity against resistant molds.

Data being presented at IDWeek 2026 show zoliflodacin maintains high gonorrhea cure rates in patients co-infected with chlamydia. David Altarac, MD, discusses the therapy and the study being presented at the conference.