Top Infectious Disease News Stories Week of November 15 - November 21

Merck’s 2-Drug HIV Regimen Shows Noninferiority to Standard 3-Drug Therapy

This week, Merck announced promising top-line results from its phase 3 trial evaluating the once-daily, oral, 2-drug regimen doravirine/islatravir (DOR/ISL) in adults newly diagnosed with HIV who were treatment naive. The double-blind, randomized study met its primary goal, showing that DOR/ISL was noninferior to the standard 3-drug regimen bictegravir/emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide (BIC/FTC/TAF) based on the percentage of participants achieving viral suppression (< 50 copies/mL) at week 48. Safety outcomes were also positive, with a comparable safety profile between the 2 regimens.¹

World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week: Broader Recognition of the Ongoing Threat

It is World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week. This week is important because it reminds the public how antibiotics have transformed human health. Everyone is touched by antibiotics and the need to treat infections. Within just a few generations, we went from a world where pneumonia, childbirth, and routine infections were often fatal to one in which these threats became manageable. That extraordinary progress has made it easy to forget how dangerous the preantibiotic era truly was.

Debiopharm's Novel Antibiotic Advancing Against Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea

A new preclinical study in Nature Communications reports that Debio 1453, a novel FabI inhibitor, rapidly kills Neisseria gonorrhoeae in vitro and clears infection in a murine vaginal gonorrhea model, including strains resistant to current last-line antibiotics. As gonorrhea remains one of the most common sexually transmitted infections worldwide, and N gonorrhoeae continues to develop resistance to successive first-line therapies, these findings highlight the need for agents with novel mechanisms and no pre-existing resistance.

Pfizer’s mRNA Influenza Vaccine Shows Superior Efficacy to Inactivated Vaccine in Phase 3 Trial

A phase 3 randomized trial of 18,476 adults found that Pfizer’s quadrivalent nucleoside-modified mRNA (modRNA) influenza vaccine demonstrated statistically superior efficacy compared with a licensed quadrivalent inactivated vaccine during the 2022–2023 influenza season. The modRNA vaccine reduced laboratory-confirmed influenza associated with influenza-like illness by 34.5% (95% CI, 7.4–53.9), meeting prespecified criteria for both noninferiority and superiority.¹

Striking the Right Balance With Molecular Diagnostics Usage and Stewardship

With the emergence of molecular rapid tests, clinicians have more diagnostics at their disposal. However, these tests can be costly and may not result in better outcomes. Timothy Jenkins, MD, medical director, of the antimicrobial stewardship program, and the microbiology laboratory at Denver Health, who spoke at a session at ID Week looking at diagnostic stewardship talked about some of the ongoing issues with molecular diagnostics today. He explains there are scenarios where unnecessary tests are being conducted that can be costly, identify viruses that do not change treatment management, and done at the wrong time of year.