{"id":11419,"date":"2026-02-11T13:39:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11419"},"modified":"2026-02-11T13:39:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:39:28","slug":"pediatricians-should-be-alert-for-this-deadly-infection-in-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/02\/11\/pediatricians-should-be-alert-for-this-deadly-infection-in-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Pediatricians Should Be Alert for This Deadly Infection in Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/casestudies\/pediatrics\/119792?xid=nl_mpt_investigative2026-02-11&amp;mh=07f73d99b2b546c079b0b5a2312d87b1&amp;zdee=gAAAAABm4uVVa0noffRIJqPd2rsKKgBm5ZURWXfuJljHxkA5SxaiDrFhpdNSLVuatrcndghIUJbdB8i3tZ00Sf5MYAfngC1RuyQP-n6FrYFzvROxn-4_blA%3D&amp;utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=InvestigativeMD_02112026&amp;utm_term=NL_Gen_Int_InvestigateMD_Active\">Medical Page Today<\/a> Two U.S. cases of&nbsp;<em>Paenibacillus dendritiformis<\/em>&nbsp;infection in infants that led to severe meningitis should raise clinicians&#8217; awareness of the rare but potentially lethal emerging threat, researchers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The cases involved&nbsp;<em>P. dendritiformis<\/em>&nbsp;infections in a female infant in Pennsylvania and a male infant in Minnesota, one of whom died. Both infants were born preterm and spent time in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), reported Jessica Ericson, MD, MPH, of Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and colleagues in the Public Health Alerts section of&nbsp;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/evidence.nejm.org\/doi\/10.1056\/EVIDpha2500297\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"NEJM Evidence, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">NEJM Evidence<\/a>,<\/em>&nbsp;which is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/infectiousdisease\/publichealth\/118093\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"published jointly, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">published jointly<\/a>&nbsp;with the University of Minnesota&#8217;s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.<\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"tPYQsjdz DqfDR\">tPYQsjdz DqfDR<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Medical Page Today Two U.S. cases of&nbsp;Paenibacillus dendritiformis&nbsp;infection in infants that led to severe meningitis should raise clinicians&#8217; awareness of the rare but potentially lethal emerging threat, researchers said. The cases involved&nbsp;P. dendritiformis&nbsp;infections in a female infant in Pennsylvania and a male infant in Minnesota, one of whom died. Both infants were born preterm and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-infectious-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11420,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11419\/revisions\/11420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}