David Rosen, PhD, MD, and Asher Schranz, MD, MPH, members of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, found people with drug use-associated infective endocarditis are at high risk of mortality and future hospitalization for bacterial infections, including endocarditis, skin and soft tissue infections and bacteremia. The study, a collaboration with the North Carolina Healthcare Association, and researchers from Duke and the University of Alabama Birmingham, was published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The researchers performed a retrospective cohort study of patients discharged after hospitalization for drug-use associated infectious endocarditis (DUA-IE) in North Carolina, including all documented adult patients in the state with a DUA-IE hospitalization between 2016 and 2020 and who had their first documented DUA-IE hospital discharge between Jan. 1, 2017, and Sept. 30, 2020. Then, they estimated the long-term risk of the first incident infection occurring after patients’ initial DUA-IE hospitalization.
The 3-year risk of mortality or hospitalization for a serious infection was 38%. The risk of incident infection rose over the 3 years of follow-up years, with the 1-year, 2-year and 3-year cumulative incidence of a subsequent hospitalization for a serious infection being 18%, 23%, and 29%, respectively.
Read more in Healio News. Find the published manuscript here.
Authors also included Mary C. Figgatt, PhD, MPH, lead author, Vivian H Chu, MD, and Li-Tzy Wu, ScD, MA. Schranz was the principal investigator.