From Lettuce Recalls to New Moderna Vaccines: This Week’s Top 5 Stories

The first animal model of neonatal sepsis to evaluate protection by maternal vaccination evidences transfer of immunity against virulent, often antibiotic-resistant Klebseilla pneumoniae.

Alejandra Gurtman, MD, discussed the phase 2 data at IDWeek 2026 which showed the investigational 25-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine 25vPnC produced serotype 3 antibody levels about 15-fold higher than Prevnar 20 after the booster dose, targeting a serotype still behind 10.6% of invasive pneumococcal disease in US children younger than five years.

Stopping empiric antibiotics early nearly tripled antibiotic-free days in neutropenic fever, and 5-day oseltamivir prophylaxis matched 10 days in hospital exposures.

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.

CDC lists 5 active multistate outbreaks tied to oysters, raw milk cheese, sprouts, and pet turtles, with recalls in effect for 4 of them.

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.

Investigational cefiderocol-xeruborbactam inhibited 98.5% of carbapenem-nonsusceptible Acinetobacter and nearly all Enterobacterales in global surveillance data.

In the phase 2 RePreve trial, Lumen Bioscience’s investigational oral biologic LMN-201 plus standard antibiotics achieved global cure in 83.3% of patients with C difficile infection vs 36.4% with placebo, and cut recurrence sixfold (9.1% vs 55.6%) with no drug-related serious adverse events.