A middle-aged man presented with pruritus ani (i.e. irritation of the skin around the anus) for several months. He had been healthy and well until he developed a bad bout of diarrhoea from a trip to a nearby country half a year ago, where he has spent a week with other volunteers helping to build […]
The following court case, described in the Australian Doctor (behind a paywall) was brought to my attention by an old friend. Essentially, a young boy slipped on wet concrete and developed an open fracture of his thumb in 2011. He was treated at a Sydney hospital, receiving IV flucloxacillin as the antibiotic stewardship guideline-recommended prophylaxis […]
Arising from a brief but wonkish post-round tea discussion. These are pharmacodynamic effects of antibiotics that inform both dosing and clinical decisions while treating bacterial infections, although they are not well known to most. Postantibiotic Effect Briefly, this is an observed phenomenon where there is delayed regrowth of bacteria after exposure to an antibiotic, even […]
One has to appreciate the messiness that results from science and research during the initial phase of evidence gathering. Just after the letter in NEJM describing the lack of resurgence of microcephaly cases in Brazil in 2016, the U.S. CDC published data from their Zika Pregnancy Registry, showing in a paper published on 4th April in the […]
The Longitude Prize is 10 million GBP prize fund that will be awarded to the person or team that solves one of the greatest issues of our time. It was developed 300 years after the original British Longitude Prize – a challenge set by the British Government in 1714 to measure the longitude accurately. The […]
On a whim, I decided to check out the statistics for the videos on Singapore and Infectious Diseases that we produced as part of the SG50 celebrations in 2015. They were uploaded on YouTube just over a year and half ago – an item off the bucket list! I still think the final video was […]
A repeat announcement of the above contest, with attractive cash prizes that will be given out on World Antibiotic Awareness Week (13-19 November 2017). We now have a webpage hosted by the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, with further details available. Submissions are welcome from 1st June, closing on 30th August for the […]
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was first discovered on 2nd October 1960 by Prof Margaret Patricia Jevons at the Public Health Laboratory in Collindale, London, UK. Methicillin (or celbenin as it was also known as then) became available for prescription in 1959, and the conventional narrative has always been that MRSA arose as a consequence of […]
When I started work as a doctor, dengue was not as common as it is today, and it was alarming to watch the platelet counts crash during the course of the infection. Senior hospitalists would routinely leave standing orders for platelet transfusions, usually once the platelet count of the patients had fallen below some arbitrary […]
The mainstream media reported a new “cluster” of Zika cases in Singapore yesterday. This involved a couple living in Hougang who almost certainly were infected by local mosquitoes. NEA/MOH were notified on 27th March and a helpful map of the cluster is provided on the NEA website. In general, perhaps because the clinical disease […]
MIPHIDIC 