Infectious Disease Update: Clinical Pearls

Stephen Tyring, MD, PhD, MBA

Dr Stephen Tyring provides us with key takeaway points from his presentation on Infectious Disease…

• The recently approved HPV vaccine protects against 9 HPV types.
• Helicase/primase inhibitors are safe and effective against HSV strains that have developed resistance to nucleoside inhibitors.
• Therapeutic HSV vaccines are showing promise in clinical trials.
• Coxsackievirus A6 is causing hand-foot-mouth disease in adults and producing more severe symptoms than in children.
• Onychomadesis is a unique late sign of Coxsackievirus A6 infection.
• Ebolavirus is a potentially lethal filovirus that produces mucocutaneous signs, e.g. ecchymoses and petechiae, late in the clinical course.
• Ebolavirus is transmitted via infected body fluids.
• Several new drugs and vaccines are being studied to manage ebola.
• Chikungunya is a togavirus carried by mosquitoes that has spread rapidly throughout the Caribbean, southern United States and northern Latin America in the past year.
• The most important symptoms of chikungunya are extreme joint pain and fever, and the most common cutaneous sign is erythematous macules.