Respiratory tract infections. Goals for 1995

Goals to be identified for 1995, a decade hence, in the prevention, diagnosis, and management of respiratory tract infections may conveniently be divided into diagnostic goals and goals in therapy and prophylaxis. Major diagnostic goals for bacterial, viral, and mycoplasmal infections of the respiratory tract focus on the development of systems to identify microbial components, such as specific antigens or segments of DNA, using monoclonal antibody techniques or DNA probes for hybridization. Sputum cultures, in the traditional sense, should ultimately become obsolete. Management goals include the development of algorithms to identify patients who should be hospitalized, in contrast to those who can safely be treated on an outpatient basis. New antibiotic drug development should include drugs active against methicillin-resistant staphylococci, broad-spectrum beta-lactam drugs that are orally active against gram-negative bacilli, and drugs that can be used parenterally on a once-daily basis in settings other than the acute care hospital. There are certainly needs to enhance the present spectrum of antiviral drugs and to develop therapeutically useful immunomodulators. There are promising prospects for vaccine development, including live attenuated influenza virus vaccine, parainfluenza virus vaccine, respiratory syncytial virus vaccine, and a Mycoplasma pneumoniae vaccine. With major research support, such vaccines could possibly be fully developed by 1995. Finally, of greatest importance is the need to achieve greater utilization of existing vaccines, that is, inactivated influenza vaccine and the current 23-valent pneumococcal vaccine. A legitimate goal for 1995 would be to achieve 70 percent or greater utilization of these vaccines within the recommended target populations.