Antimicrobial resistance is a critical threat to public health. The value of antibiotics for human health is immeasurable, but were one to try to measure, a plausible estimate of the increase in life expectancy attributable to antibiotics might be 2 to 10 years. If we multiply this increase by 300 million Americans, and a dollar value of, say $100,000 per life-year, we arrive at an estimate for the worth of the current stock of antibiotics of $60 trillion to $300 trillion in the United States alone.

Observational cohort studies and a secondary prevention trial have shown an inverse association between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and cardiovascular
risk. The researchers conducted a randomized trial of this diet pattern for the primary prevention of cardiovascular events.

The authors conducted an 18-month trial involving 641 primarily normal-weight children from 4 years 10 months to 11 years 11 months of age. Participants were randomly assigned to receive 250 ml (8 oz) per day of a sugar-free, artificially sweetened beverage (sugar-free group) or a similar sugar-containing beverage that provided 104 kcal (sugar group). Beverages were distributed through schools. At 18 months, 26% of the children had stopped consuming the beverages; the data from children who did not complete the study were imputed.

Temporal increases in the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages have paralleled the rise in obesity prevalence, but whether the intake of such beverages interacts with the genetic predisposition to adiposity is unknown.

Familial diarrhea disorders are, in most cases, severe and caused by recessive mutations. We describe the cause of a novel dominant disease in 32 members of a Norwegian family. The affected members have chronic diarrhea that is of early onset, is relatively mild, and is associated with increased susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease, small-bowel obstruction, and esophagitis.

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An ongoing phase 3 study of the efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of candidate malaria vaccine RTS,S/AS01 is being conducted in seven African countries.

A child with chest pain or tics, a toddler who is limping, a 12-year-old girl with abdominal pain or headaches, an infant whose fever does not respond to antibiotics — these are age-old challenges that pediatricians face.

The largest recorded outbreak of a circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus (cVDPV), detected in Nigeria, provides a unique opportunity to analyze the pathogenicity of the virus, the clinical severity of the disease, and the effectiveness of control measures for cVDPVs as compared with wild-type poliovirus (WPV).

How can we best advance the collective health of the United States, while monitoring our progress?

A study of South Africans infected with both HIV and tuberculosis (TB) has found that starting antiretroviral (ARV) therapy during TB therapy can improve survival rates. Researchers found that death rates more than doubled when ARV treatment was delayed until the completion of TB treatment.