I had the privilege of chatting with Dr. Michael Barza on Friday about what’s going on in the field of infectious diseases. Barza is the Chief of Medicine and Program Director for Internal Medicine at Caritas Carney Hospital and also Vice Chairman for Operations and Associate Chief of Medicine at New England Medical Center, both of which are in Boston, Mass. Barza also serves as the Deputy Editor of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Click below to hear the interview.
Interview with Dr. Michael Barza
Here’s the transcript:
Christina Zdanowicz: How long have you been working in the field of infectious disease and what specifically is your specialty?
Dr. Michael Barza: For 40 years. At least I began my fellowship in 1968 at New England Medical Center. And my specialty is probably antibiotics, pneumonia, fevers of unknown origin. Those would be my main areas of interest.
CZ: What’s you affiliation with the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal?
MB: I’m the deputy editor of that journal. My main duty is to take the first look at virtually all of the unsolicited manuscripts, which is most of the manuscripts – about 2,500 a year. I take the first look at those and decide if I think we should be interested in sending them out for review or declining them without review.
CZ: What is the exact scope or what are some of the topics in that journal?
MB: It’s very broad reaching. It covers all aspects of infectious disease ranging from hospital epidemiology to immunization practices to infections by virtually any kind of pathogen: viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites. As well as sometimes dealing with issues of ethics, of efficiency of consultations of sort of general topics like that. So, virtually all aspects of infectious disease but the emphasis is upon clinical infectious diseases, not so much in basic research, or if its basic research, it must be something applicable more or less now.
CZ: What are some of the hot topics relating to infectious diseases that the journal has been publishing about more recently?
MB: In terms of viruses, influenza, both influenza A and B that we have in this country already as well as H5N1. Influenza has been a big topic. Other viral infections, of course HIV is always an important topic. Lately, we’ve actually had quite a few studies of treatment issues in HIV in developing countries – Africa, southeast Asia and so on.
In terms of bacterial infections, the biggest issue is probably been MRSA, which is an acronym for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. We’ve also had quite a bit on resistant bacteria, especially resistant Gram-negative bacteria, especially in intensive care units and elsewhere in hospitals, multi-resistant organisms, which have been an increasing problem in mot countries. Sticking with bacteria, tuberculosis continues to be a major killer and in particular now, there’s been a great deal of concern about multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. So called XDR, extended drug resistant TB. These organisms are actually resistant to virtually every antimicrobial that we can throw at them.
Then, a number of parasitic infections, malaria continues to be a major killer and cause of morbidity in a lot of countries, so we continue to have an interest in trials of new anti-malarial agents.
CZ: And anything coming up in the new issue of the journal that is really groundbreaking or something that the community will really latch onto?
MB: Well, I haven’t looked yet at what’s on. I see these things usually several weeks in advance and I can’t remember what’s on for the next issue. I don’t remember anything that’s earth shattering. There is, in a few weeks, we’re going to have expedited publication, which we hardly ever do, of an article describing a kind of outbreak of a kind of E. coli in the United Kingdom. A kind of E. coli infection that can sometimes cause serious damage to the kidneys, it’s called the hemolytic uremic syndrome. In fact that manuscript is going to be the basis of an inquiry by some judicial commission in the United Kingdom. So we have been considering releasing that in expedited form.
CZ: That sounds like something really explosive potentially if it’s going to a judicial committee.
MB: It does have public health implications in part because mostly because there’s some evidence that these infections could be transmitted from child to child, I guess from adult to child too, or vice versa, but there have been some cases of transmission, so they want to alert the public that if one child has some of these symptoms, they should be kept separate from other children. So, I think that, in part, will be the subject of the inquiry.
