Acceptability, Feasibility, and Validity of Detecting Respiratory Pathogens During Acute Respiratory Illness in Participant-Collected Swabs in a Low-Income, Community Sample.

Background: Community surveillance for acute respiratory illness (ARI) can include unsupervised participant-collected nasal swabs. Little is known about use of self-swabs in low-income populations or among households including extended family members and the validity of self-collected swabs. We assessed the acceptability, feasibility, and validity of unsupervised participant-collected nasal swabs in a low-income, community sample.

Five-Year Community Surveillance Study for Acute Respiratory Infections Using Text Messaging: Findings From the MoSAIC Study.

Background: Acute respiratory infections (ARI) are the most common infectious diseases globally. Community surveillance may provide a more comprehensive picture of disease burden than medically attended illness alone.

Methods: In this longitudinal study conducted from 2012 to 2017 in the Washington Heights/Inwood area of New York City, we enrolled 405 households with 1915 individuals.

Severe Clinical Outcomes Among Adults Hospitalized With Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infections, New York City, 2017-2019.

Objectives: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes substantial morbidity and mortality in older adults. We assessed severe clinical outcomes among hospitalized adults that were associated with RSV infections.

Methods: We performed a nested retrospective study in 3 New York City hospitals during 2 respiratory viral seasons, October 2017-April 2018 and October 2018-April 2019, to determine the proportion of patients with laboratory-confirmed RSV infection who experienced severe outcomes defined as intensive care unit (ICU) admission, mechanical ventilation, and/or death.

Multicenter Study of Hand Carriage of Potential Pathogens by Neonatal ICU Healthcare Personnel.

A multicenter surveillance study was performed to determine the rates of hand carriage of potential pathogens among healthcare personnel in four neonatal intensive care units. Staphylococcus aureus, enterococci, and gram-negative bacilli were recovered from 8%, 3%, and 2% of 1000 hand culture samples, respectively.

MoSAIC: Mobile Surveillance for Acute Respiratory Infections and Influenza-Like Illness in the Community.

Surveillance for acute respiratory infection (ARI) and influenza-like illness (ILI) relies primarily on reports of medically attended illness. Community surveillance could mitigate delays in reporting, allow for timely collection of respiratory tract samples, and characterize cases of non–medically attended ILI representing substantial personal and economic burden. Text messaging could be utilized to perform longitudinal ILI surveillance in a community-based sample but has not been assessed.

Lack of significant variability among different methods for calculating antimicrobial days of therapy.

Days of therapy (DOTs) are an important measure to quantify antimicrobial use but may not reflect patients' true antimicrobial exposure. Three methods of calculating DOTs were compared to determine whether including "exposure days," when antimicrobials are given less frequently than daily due to renal dysfunction, makes a difference.

The changing epidemiology of pediatric endocarditis at a children's hospital over seven decades.

This study sought to determine whether improvements in the care of children with congenital heart disease (CHD) have changed the epidemiology of infective endocarditis (IE). A retrospective study of patients 18 years of age and younger treated for IE from 1992 to 2004 (era 3) was conducted at the authors' children's hospital in New York City. This study was compared with two previous studies conducted at the same hospital from 1930 to 1959 (era 1) and from 1977 to 1992 (era 2).