College athletes who play contact sports are more than twice as likely to carry the deadly superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylocuccus aureus (MRSA) than peers who play non-contact sports, according to a Vanderbilt study released at IDWeek 2014.

James Cassat, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of Pediatrics and Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, has received a Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) Career Award for Medical Scientists.

Two new services focused on treating infectious diseases in children started this month at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, including one that cares solely for children with compromised immune systems.

Pediatric Infectious Diseases fellow Annabelle de St. Maurice, M.D., has been awarded a grant to determine the relationship between pneumococcal vaccination and the emergence of certain strains of pneumococcal bacteria not covered by vaccines.

The Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program has received a major contract from the National Institutes of Health to continue its work as one of the nation’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units.

Vanderbilt’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit (VTEU) is one of nine U.S. sites funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to test the effectiveness of a vaccine to protect against the H7N9 bird flu that emerged in China this spring.

After more than a month in and out of the hospital with her daughter, Kynslee, Kristen Allen felt she was at the end of her rope. Last spring, the nearly 2-year-old Columbia girl developed diarrhea that wouldn’t go away after taking antibiotics for repeated ear infections.