Harvard researchers have created a new, greatly simplified, platform for antibiotic discovery that may go a long way to solving the crisis of antibiotic resistance.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria most often are associated with hospitals and other health-care settings, but a new study indicates that chicken coops and sewage treatment plants also are hot spots of antibiotic resistance.
High risk, potentially cancer causing human papillomavirus infections are common among women in Papua New Guinea. But self sampling with vaginal swabs may provide materials that screen as accurately as the more labor-intensive approach using cervical samples obtained by clinicians. This finding is critical to developing same day screening and treatment, which is key to ensuring that women with precancerous lesions are treated in this largely unconnected (electronically) country, and in others like it. The research appeared online April 13, 2016 in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, which is published by the American Society for Microbiology.
Pinellas County a Model for Mosquito-Borne Disease Surveillance, Scientists Unravel the Genetic Evolution of Zika Virus, Worm Infection Counters Inflammatory Bowel Disease and more in the Infectious Diseases News Source
An international team of including the Lomonosov Moscow State University researchers discovered which enzyme enables Escherichia coli bacterium (E. coli) to breathe. The study is published in the Scientific Reports.
A simulation of how the so-called “superbug” carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) might spread among health care facilities found that coordinated efforts prevented more than 75 percent of the often-severe infections that would have otherwise occurred over a five-year period.
A team of researchers, led by Ludwig Cancer Research scientist Paul Mischel and James Heath of the California Institute of Technology, has probed biochemical signaling cascades within individual cancer cells to capture a previously poorly understood but clinically significant mechanism of cancer drug resistance. Published in the current issue of Cancer Cell, their paper shows that cells of the invariably lethal brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) begin adapting to resist therapy within as little as three days of its initiation.
A research team led by University of Arkansas chemist Jingyi Chen and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences microbiologist Mark Smeltzer has developed an alternative therapeutic approach to fighting antibiotic-resistant infections.
Scientists have documented for the first time how competition among different malaria parasite strains in human hosts could influence the spread of drug resistance.
A University of Saskatchewan team has discovered a way to prevent bacteria from developing resistance to antibiotics, potentially helping to blunt the edge of a looming threat to public health around the world.
One in four seniors is bringing along stowaways from the hospital to their next stop: superbugs on their hands.
Moreover, seniors who go to a nursing home or other post-acute care facility will continue to acquire new superbugs during their stay, according to findings made by University of Michigan researchers published in a JAMA Internal Medicine research letter.
If you want to beat a fearsome enemy, you must first learn to think like them. If you do, you can predict their next move – and block it.
This advice may work on the battlefield. But scientists also think it will work in the battle against one of the most dangerous bacteria our bodies can face: Clostridium difficile.
As scientists look for replacements for our dwindling stock of antibiotics, the evolution of resistance is never far from their minds. Washington University in St. Louis biologist R. Fredrik Inglis explored the ability of bacteria to become resistant to a toxin called a bacteriocin by growing them for many generations in the presence of the toxin.
A team has solved the structure of a key protein in HKU1, a coronavirus identified in Hong Kong in 2005 and highly related to SARS and MERS. They believe their findings will guide future treatments for this family of viruses.
Dr. Palamar and his team of researchers are the first to examine whether ecstasy users are unknowingly or unintentionally using "bath salts" and/or other novel psychoactive drugs.
Co-senior author Hari Arthanari describes how he and his colleagues re-sensitized multidrug-resistant pathogenic yeast to antifungal treatment by finding a compound that prevents two proteins from interacting with each other. Video: Stephanie Dutchen An international team led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital has devised a new way to approach the problem of multidrug-resistant fungal infections that can be life-threatening to people with weakened immune systems.
Behavioral interventions that appealed to doctors' competitive spirits and desire to strengthen their reputations motivated them to significantly reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions, a new study shows.
A new method for detection of infection in wounds could take physicians less than a minute to complete, rather than the current 24 hours it takes for diagnosis, according to research by the George Washington University’s Victoria Shanmugam, M.D.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System report data suggesting that e-cigarettes are toxic to human airway cells, suppress immune defenses and alter inflammation, while at the same time boosting bacterial virulence. The mouse study is published January 25 by the Journal of Molecular Medicine.
Researchers at Duke Health are fine-tuning a test that can determine whether a respiratory illness is caused by infection from a virus or bacteria so that antibiotics can be more precisely prescribed.
Biophysicists have discovered why the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB) are naturally somewhat resistant to antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. Their findings also suggest how drug developers can make fluoroquinolones more efficacious against mutations that make the lung disease drug resistant.
In the ever-escalating evolutionary battle with drug-resistant bacteria, humans may soon have a leg up thanks to adaptive, light-activated nanotherapy developed by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Given that antibiotics are losing effectiveness faster than replacements are being found, Washington University in St. Louis chemist Timothy Wencewicz suggests we try a new approach. Drugs that hobble the production of virulence factors, small molecules that help bacteria to establish an infection in a host, would put much less selective pressure on bacteria and delay the evolution of resistance. In the journal Infectious Diseases, he describes recent work on a target virulence factor.
The bacterium B. cereus had so far been considered to be exclusively endospore-forming. In response to harsh conditions, the bacteria form protective endospores enabling them to remain dormant for extended periods. When conditions are more favourable, the endospores reactivate to become fully functioning bacteria.
A well-known ‘superbug’ which was thought to have been a static or non-motile organism has been observed showing signs of active motility by scientists at The Universities of Nottingham and Sheffield.
Even as the global malarial pandemic appears to be on a decline, drug resistant malarial parasites are on the rise, says an infectious disease researcher at Georgetown University Medical Center, who is taking the lead on a multi-institutional effort to investigate the causes of this growing concern.
A novel class of antimicrobials that inhibits the function of a key disease-causing component of bacteria could be effective in fighting methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), one of the major drug-resistant bacterial pathogens, according to researchers at Georgia State University.
Researchers at the University of Georgia have developed a model for evaluating a potential new strategy in the fight against drug-resistant diseases. The strategy would take advantage of parasite refugia—host populations that have not been treated with drugs, thereby serving as “safe zones” where parasites don’t develop drug resistance.
A report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) warns that the widespread practice of giving antibiotics to livestock for growth promotion and the prevention of disease among animals in agriculture is making the drugs ineffective when they are needed to treat infections in people.
The CDC’s Get Smart campaign involves a number of initiatives to prevent antibiotic resistance, manage existing antibiotics to preserve their effectiveness and help healthcare providers and families understand when prescribing an antibiotic is appropriate — and when it is not.
Johns Hopkins Children’s Center specialists report they have successfully treated and put in remission a 2-year-old, now age 5, with a highly virulent form of tuberculosis known as XDR TB, or extensively drug-resistant TB.
The American Cleaning Institute® (ACI) urged the Food and Drug Administration to re-evaluate all data relevant to the safety and efficacy of antibacterial health care ingredients and make affirmative findings that they are generally recognized as safe and effective. ACI submitted detailed comments to FDA on the agency’s proposed rules governing over-the-counter antiseptic healthcare products.
A medical records analysis by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center concludes that physicians who treat severe acne leave too many patients on ineffective antibiotics for far too long before prescribing more potent needed therapy with the medication isotretinoin, sometimes known by its former brand name Accutane.
Staphylococcus aureus is a formidable human pathogen. One of the bacterium’s most impressive weapons is α-toxin, which provokes the destruction of human cells. An international project allowed to identify the components of our cells that modulate the virulence of this toxin, in particular the PLEKHA7 protein.
Children are becoming infected with the highly fatal antibiotic resistant bacteria CRE at a much higher rate than the recent past, according to a data analysis by researchers at Rush University Medical Center. The study was published in the Centers for Disease Control’s publication Emerging Infectious Diseases on Oct. 14.