[News release
From the 19 May 2015 SHEA news release
New research finds that misdiagnoses lead to increased risk of incorrect antibiotic use, threatening patient outcomes and antimicrobial efficacy, while increasing healthcare costs. The study was published online today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.
“Antibiotic therapies are used for approximately 56 percent of inpatients in U.S. hospitals, but are found to be inappropriate in nearly half of these cases, and many of these failures are connected with inaccurate diagnoses,” said Greg Filice, MD, lead author of the study. “The findings suggest that antimicrobial stewardship programs could be more impactful if they were designed to help providers make accurate initial diagnoses and to know when antibiotics can be safely withheld.”
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Additionally, researchers found that overall, only 58 percent of patients received a correct diagnosis, indicating that diagnostic errors were more prevalent in this study than in previous studies unrelated to antimicrobial use. The most common incorrect diagnoses identified by researchers were pneumonia, cystitis, urinary tract infections, kidney infections and urosepsis.
Contributing factors which the researchers said may lead to inaccurate diagnosis and inappropriate antibiotic use include:
- Healthcare workers (HCWs) relying on intuitive processes, instead of analytical processes which are more reliable, safe and effective.
- HCWs experiencing fatigue, sleep deprivation and/or cognitive overload more prevalent in inpatient settings.
- HCWs receiving patients with a previous diagnosis from another provider.
- Lack of clinical experience and minimal personal experience with adverse drug effects.
[News release] Common bacteria on verge of becoming antibiotic-resistant superbugs
From the 25 March 2015 MedicalExpress item
Bacteria that cause many hospital-associated infections are ready to quickly share genes that allow them to resist powerful antibiotics. The illustration, based on electron micrographs and created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows one of these antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Credit: CDC/James Archer
Antibiotic resistance is poised to spread globally among bacteria frequently implicated in respiratory and urinary infections in hospital settings, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The study shows that two genes that confer resistance against a particularly strong class of antibiotics can be shared easily among a family of bacteria responsible for a significant portion of hospital-associated infections.
Drug-resistant germs in the same family of bacteria recently infected several patients at two Los Angeles hospitals. The infections have been linked to medical scopes believed to have been contaminated with bacteria that can resist carbapenems, potent antibiotics that are supposed to be used only in gravely ill patients or those infected by resistant bacteria.
“Carbapenems are one of our last resorts for treating bacterial infections, what we use when nothing else works,” said senior author Gautam Dantas, PhD, associate professor of pathology and immunology. “Given what we know now, I don’t think it’s overstating the case to say that for certain types of infections, we may be looking at the start of the post-antibiotic era, a time when most of the antibiotics we rely on to treat bacterial infections are no longer effective.”
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[Scientific article] The dissemination of staph infections in hospitals
Date:March 19, 2015
Source:PLOS
Summary:Wireless sensors recording human interactions explain the transmission of germs, such as MRSA, in hospitals, according to new research.
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The results indicate that the study of individuals contact may help identify increased risk of transmission situations and ultimately reduce the burden of nosocomial S. aureus transmission.
The researchers say: “Contact networks have been increasingly used in modeling the spread of infectious diseases. Yet, the contacts collected were often incomplete or used proxies that were thought to capture situation at risk. In this unique experiment, the joint analysis of contact and carriage validates the use of close-proximity interactions recorded by electronic devices, and opens a new field for prevention measures in hospitals.”
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[Research Magazine Article] Looking for alternatives to antibiotics
From the March 2015 article by the University of Oslo
Bacteria that talk to one another and organize themselves into biofilms are more resistant to antibiotics. Researchers are now working to develop drugs that prevent bacteria from communicating.
Tracing bacteria: The researchers are testing the new group of drugs in transparent worms called C. elegans, in which they can trace the bacteria while infection develops. They do this by feeding the worms with fluorescent bacteria.
The aim is to find alternatives to antibiotics and reduce the number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
– Understanding how bacteria communicate could provide a new means of controlling them and preventing and treating infectious diseases, says Professor Anne Aamdal Scheie at the Department of Oral Biology at the University of Oslo.
Together with Professor Fernanda Cristina Petersen, Aamdal Scheie is shedding light on one of the most important health challenges facing the world today, namely antibiotic resistance. The researchers believe that understanding bacterial communication has a key role to play in the fight against resistant bacteria.
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Research groups at the Faculty of Dentistry therefore want to understand how bacteria talk to one another – precisely to prevent them from communicating and becoming hazardous.
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Unwanted impact of antibiotics broader, more complex than previously known
Antibiotics significantly kill intestinal epithelium, the site of nutrient absorption, a part of our immune system and a place where other biological functions maintain human health.
Unwanted impact of antibiotics broader, more complex than previously known
From the 10 February 2015 Oregon State University press release
Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that antibiotics have an impact on the microorganisms that live in an animal’s gut that’s more broad and complex than previously known.
The findings help to better explain some of the damage these medications can do, and set the stage for new ways to study and offset those impacts.
The work was published online in the journal Gut, in research supported by Oregon State University, the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon and the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers have known for some time that antibiotics can have unwanted side effects, especially in disrupting the natural and beneficial microbiota of the gastrointestinal system. But the new study helps explain in much more detail why that is happening, and also suggests that powerful, long-term antibiotic use can have even more far-reaching effects.
Scientists now suspect that antibiotic use, and especially overuse, can have unwanted effects on everything from the immune system to glucose metabolism, food absorption, obesity, stress and behavior.
The issues are rising in importance, since 40 percent of all adults and 70 percent of all children take one or more antibiotics every year, not to mention their use in billions of food animals. Although when used properly antibiotics can help treat life-threatening bacterial infections, more than 10 percent of people who receive the medications can suffer from adverse side effects.
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“Prior to this most people thought antibiotics only depleted microbiota and diminished several important immune functions that take place in the gut,” Morgun said. “Actually that’s only about one-third of the picture. They also kill intestinal epithelium. Destruction of the intestinal epithelium is important because this is the site of nutrient absorption, part of our immune system and it has other biological functions that play a role in human health.”
The research also found that antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant microbes caused significant changes in mitochondrial function, which in turn can lead to more epithelial cell death. That antibiotics have special impacts on the mitochondria of cells is both important and interesting, said Morgun, who was a co-leader of this study with Dr. Natalia Shulzhenko, a researcher in the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine who has an M.D. from Kharkiv Medical University.
Mitochondria plays a major role in cell signaling, growth and energy production, and for good health they need to function properly.
But the relationship of antibiotics to mitochondria may go back a long way. In evolution, mitochondria descended from bacteria, which were some of the earliest life forms, and different bacteria competed with each other for survival. That an antibiotic would still selectively attack the portion of a cell that most closely resembles bacteria may be a throwback to that ingrained sense of competition and the very evolution of life.
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Digestive dysfunction is near the top of the list, with antibiotic use linked to such issues as diarrhea and ulcerative colitis. But new research is also finding links to obesity, food absorption, depression, immune function, sepsis, allergies and asthma.
This research also developed a new bioinformatics approach named “transkingdom network interrogation” to studying microbiota, which could help further speed the study of any alterations of host microbiota interactions and antibiotic impact. This could aid the search for new probiotics to help offset antibiotic effects, and conceivably lead to systems that would diagnose a person’s microbiome, identify deficiencies and then address them in a precise and individual way.
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[News article] Drug-resistant bacteria lurk in subway stations, high school students discover
Reminds me of high school biology (1971). We took samples in the building, including drinking fountains, shower area, cafeteria, and restrooms. Were we ever grossed out!
On another note, am wondering how many folks have strong enough immune systems so these bacteria don’t take hold.
From the 5 February article at the Rockefeller University
Forget the five-million plus commuters and untold number of rats – many of the living things crowded into the New York City subway system are too small to see. An interest in the more menacing among these microbes led high school student Anya Dunaif, a participant in Rockefeller’s Summer Science Research Program, to spend her vacation swabbing benches and turn styles beneath the city. Among her findings: bacteria impervious to two major antibiotics.
The samples she collected and cultured in five stations are a component of a city-scale environmental DNA sampling effort led by Chris Mason, an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College with support from Rockefeller’s Science Outreach program, as well as from numerous local, national and international collaborators. This project, called Pathomap, seeks to profile the city’s microbial community, or microbiome, while also capturing DNA from other organisms. All of this genetic evidence could potentially be used to assess biological threats, including those to human health. The project’s initial results are described in a paper published Wednesday (February 4) inCell Systems.
With help from fellow high school student researcher Nell Kirchberger, Dunaif collected the bacteria on swabs and tested to see if they would grow in Petri dishes containing three commonly used antibiotics. Bacteria from five of the 18 swabs she tested grew in spite of the presence of either ampicillin or kanamycin, and in one case, both. None of the cultured bacteria appeared resistant to the third antibiotic, chloramphenicol.
Antibiotic resistance – the ability of disease-causing bacteria to withstand compounds used to kill them off – can make a once treatable infection more serious, even life threatening. A natural consequence of evolution, and the widespread use and misuse of antibiotics, resistance is increasing worldwide.
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[News article] Vaccination leads to decline in pneumococcal disease and antibiotic resistance | Daily Science News
Vaccination leads to decline in pneumococcal disease and antibiotic resistance | Daily Science News.
The release of the results of the study coincides with World Pneumonia Day, commemorated annually on 12 November.
The study, titled: Effects of Vaccination on Invasive Pneumococcal Disease in South Africa, published in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), compares IPD incidence after the introduction of PCV (post-introduction: 2011 and 2012) to incidence prior to its introduction (2005-2008), focusing on high-risk groups.
Although the majority of childhood pneumococcal deaths occur in Africa, evidence of the potential impact of pneumococcal vaccines in routine use has largely been drawn from high-income countries. However, two recent publications from South Africa have demonstrated PCVs to be effective in preventing pneumococcal disease among South African children, in conditions of routine vaccine use.
“The results show that the vaccine works as rolled out in our immunization program and this supports the hard work of our national and provincial Departments of Health. However, much still remains to be done in South Africa, other countries in Africa and elsewhere to prevent children from developing and dying from pneumonia,”said Dr Anne von Gottberg, lead author of the paper, Clinical Microbiologist, Head of the Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis at the NICD and Associate Professor in the School of Pathology at Wits.
This study demonstrates significant declines in pneumococcal disease cases caused by bacteria resistant to one or more antibiotics, a phenomenon of growing concern among health professionals. In fact, the rate of infections resistant to two different antibiotics declined nearly twice as much as infections that could be treated with antibiotics. This proportionately greater effect of vaccination on antibiotic-resistant strains points to a very valuable added benefit of immunization.
“These are very compelling results,” said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a Geneva-based global health organization that part-funded the research. “Not only does it add significant weight to the growing body of evidence that PCV prevents disease, but it suggests that vaccines may have a role to play in the fight against antibiotic resistance.”
“Vaccination is one of the most effective and underappreciated tools available to reduce antibiotic resistance. The majority of resistant strains of pneumococcus are of types which are included in the vaccine, for this reason, vaccine introduction in South Africa, has led to a substantial decline in antibiotic resistant invasive pneumococcal disease,” said Dr Cheryl Cohen, co-author of the paper, Clinical Epidemiologist at the NICD and senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at Wits.
In 2009, South Africa became the first African country – and the first nation in the world with a high HIV prevalence – to introduce PCV7 into its routine immunization program. The current study shows a significant decline in IPD in children and in unvaccinated adults, which demonstrates the indirect protection conferred by herd immunity. Among children under two years of age, overall incidence of IPD declined nearly 70% after PCV introduction, and rates of IPD caused by bacteria specifically targeted by the vaccine plummeted nearly 90%.
A recent study published by the researchers in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal found that the risk of IPD in South African children increased with HIV exposure, as well as with underlying medical conditions, malnutrition, tuberculosis, upper-respiratory tract infections and exposure to other children.
“We have shown that HIV-infected and HIV-exposed children experience a disproportionate burden of pneumococcal disease. The vaccine has also been shown to be highly effective in HIV-exposed children and disease reductions have been observed in both HIV-infected and uninfected children,” said Dr Claire von Mollendorf, a medical epidemiologist from the NICD. “This study reinforces what the scientific community has known – that the pneumococcal vaccine saves lives.”
Although incidence of HIV among infants is decreasing in South Africa due to improved prevention of the mother-to-child HIV transmission and the use of anti-retrovirals, a large number of HIV-exposed yet uninfected children remain, for whom vaccination against pneumococcal disease may be of particular importance to ensuring reduced risk of life-threatening infections in childhood.
[Press release] Honey is a new approach to fighting antibiotic resistance: How sweet it is!
Honey is a new approach to fighting antibiotic resistance: How sweet it is!.
DALLAS, March 16, 2014 — Honey, that delectable condiment for breads and fruits, could be one sweet solution to the serious, ever-growing problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, researchers said here today.
Medical professionals sometimes use honey successfully as a topical dressing, but it could play a larger role in fighting infections, the researchers predicted. Their study was part of the 247th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.
The meeting, attended by thousands of scientists, features more than 10,000 reports on new advances in science and other topics. It is being held at the Dallas Convention Center and area hotels through Thursday.
Honey Reclamation Program (Photo credit: The Rocketeer)
“The unique property of honey lies in its ability to fight infection on multiple levels, making it more difficult for bacteria to develop resistance,” said study leader Susan M. Meschwitz, Ph.D. That is, it uses a combination of weapons, including hydrogen peroxide, acidity, osmotic effect, high sugar concentration and polyphenols — all of which actively kill bacterial cells, she explained. The osmotic effect, which is the result of the high sugar concentration in honey, draws water from the bacterial cells, dehydrating and killing them.
In addition, several studies have shown that honey inhibits the formation of biofilms, or communities of slimy disease-causing bacteria, she said. “Honey may also disrupt quorum sensing, which weakens bacterial virulence, rendering the bacteria more susceptible to conventional antibiotics,” Meschwitz said. Quorum sensing is the way bacteria communicate with one another, and may be involved in the formation of biofilms. In certain bacteria, this communication system also controls the release of toxins, which affects the bacteria’s pathogenicity, or their ability to cause disease.
Meschwitz, who is with Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., said another advantage of honey is that unlike conventional antibiotics, it doesn’t target the essential growth processes of bacteria. The problem with this type of targeting, which is the basis of conventional antibiotics, is that it results in the bacteria building up resistance to the drugs.
Honey is effective because it is filled with healthful polyphenols, or antioxidants, she said. These include the phenolic acids, caffeic acid, p-coumaric acid and ellagic acid, as well as many flavonoids. “Several studies have demonstrated a correlation between the non-peroxide antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of honey and the presence of honey phenolics,” she added. A large number of laboratory and limited clinical studies have confirmed the broad-spectrum antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral properties of honey, according to Meschwitz.
She said that her team also is finding that honey has antioxidant properties and is an effective antibacterial. “We have run standard antioxidant tests on honey to measure the level of antioxidant activity,” she explained. “We have separated and identified the various antioxidant polyphenol compounds. In our antibacterial studies, we have been testing honey’s activity against E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, among others.”
[News story] Commonly used pain relievers have added benefit of fighting bacterial infection — ScienceDaily
Commonly used pain relievers have added benefit of fighting bacterial infection — ScienceDaily.
Summary:
Some commonly used drugs that combat aches and pains, fever, and inflammation are also thought to have the ability to kill bacteria. New research reveals that these drugs, better known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, act on bacteria in a way that is fundamentally different from current antibiotics. The discovery could open up new strategies for fighting drug-resistant infections and ‘superbugs.’…
“We discovered that some anti-inflammatory drugs used in human and veterinary medicine have weak antibiotic activity and that they exert this secondary activity by preventing bacteria from copying their DNA, which they need to do in order to multiply,” explains senior author Dr. Aaron Oakley of the University of Wollongong, in Australia. The researchers analyzed three NSAIDs: bromofenac, carprofen, and vedaprofen. The more commonly known NSAIDs, which include aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen, were not tested.
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[Reblog] Why Americans and Europeans may soon start dying of infections like it’s 1905 again
A schematic representation of how antibiotic resistance is enhanced by natural selection (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From the 18 November 2013 Quartz posting
Antibiotics aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do anymore. You know, kill infections. Since Alexander Fleming invented penicillin 75 years ago, nearly all bacteria have mutated into strains impervious to antibiotics. Those souped up bacteria now kill hundreds of thousands of people, at a minimum, each year. And according to a new issue of medical journal The Lancet focused on antibiotic-resistant bacteria, things could soon get a whole lot scarier.
+“Rarely has modern medicine faced such a grave threat. Without antibiotics, treatments for minor surgery to major transplants could become impossible…,” argue a team of UK medical experts in one article in a series on antibiotic resistance (paywall) in The Lancet. ”Infection-related mortality rates in developed countries might return to those of the early 20th century,” they say.
The reason antibiotics are no longer doing what they’re supposed to is mainly that they’re being given to the wrong patient. Instead of people with severe infections or risk of infection, the majority of antibiotics are consumed by animals and people who aren’t sick enough to justify their use.
Pigs, chickens, cows, fish and other animals consume the majority of the 100,000-200,000 tonnes (110,000-220,000 tons) of antibiotics manufactured each year, as farmers try to keep growing large and healthy animals under unsanitary conditions. The bacterial strains created in these conditions can spread to humans.
At the same time, perverse incentives in poor countries encourage overuse. People often take antibiotics available over-the-counter, says The Lancet’s report on global resistance, and self-medication by consumers is common. The lack of sound medical care in some areas means that pharmaceutical companies are the chief source of information on when to take antibiotics and in what dose.
……
http://grosvenorcontractsblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/european-antibiotic-awareness-day/
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- ‘Re-engineer healthcare to develop antibiotic resistance’ (thehindu.com)
- New warning says ‘superbugs’ could erase century of medical advances (foxnews.com)
- Worldwide Antibiotics Warning: Resistance ‘Growing’ (prayingforoneday.wordpress.com)
- Antibiotics Warning: Resistance ‘Growing’ (news.sky.com)
Beyond Antibiotics: ‘PPMOs’ Offer New Approach to Bacterial Infection, Other Diseases
From the 15 October 2013 ScienceDaily article
Researchers at Oregon State University and other institutions today announced the successful use of a new type of antibacterial agent called a PPMO, which appears to function as well or better than an antibiotic, but may be more precise and also solve problems with antibiotic resistance.
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- AAP Updates Antibiotic Use for Sinusitis (wordofmomtoddler.wordpress.com)
- New Studies Show Drop in C.diff and VRE Infection Rates When Xenex UV Room Disinfection Utilized as Alternative to Bleach (hispanicbusiness.com)
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Untreatable: Report by CDC details today’s drug-resistant health threats
From the US Centers for Disease Control 16 September press release
Landmark report ranks threats, outlines four core actions to halt resistance
Every year, more than two million people in the United States get infections that are resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die as a result, according to a new report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report, Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013, presents the first snapshot of the burden and threats posed by antibiotic-resistant germs having the most impact on human health. The threats are ranked in categories: urgent, serious, and concerning.
Threats were assessed according to seven factors associated with resistant infections: health impact, economic impact, how common the infection is, a 10-year projection of how common it could become, how easily it spreads, availability of effective antibiotics, and barriers to prevention. Infections classified as urgent threats include carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), drug-resistant gonorrhea, and Clostridium difficile, a serious diarrheal infection usually associated with antibiotic use. C. difficile causes about 250,000 hospitalizations and at least 14,000 deaths every year in the United States.
“Antibiotic resistance is rising for many different pathogens that are threats to health,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “If we don’t act now, our medicine cabinet will be empty and we won’t have the antibiotics we need to save lives.”
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Four Core Actions to Fight Antibiotic Resistance
- Preventing Infections, Preventing the Spread of Resistance
- Tracking Resistance Patterns
- Improving Use of Today’s Antibiotics (Antibiotic Stewardship)
- Developing New Antibiotics and Diagnostic Tests
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Read the entire press release here
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Novel Approaches Needed to End Growing Scourge of ‘Superbugs’
A schematic representation of how antibiotic resistance is enhanced by natural selection (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From the 23 January 2013 article at Science Daily
With the rising awareness of the so-called “superbugs,” bacteria that are resistant to most known antibiotics, three infectious disease experts writing in the Jan. 24 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine called for novel approaches based on a “reconceptualization of the nature of resistance, disease and prevention.”
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“Antibiotic-resistant microbes infect more than 2 million Americans every year and kill more than 100,000 annually,” said Brad Spellberg, M.D., a Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center lead researcher and one of the authors of the viewpoint article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “They spread rapidly, even in such seemingly harmless places as high school locker rooms, where they infect young athletes, and they can make mundane urinary or intestinal infections life-threatening. At the same time, the development of new antibiotics to treat these infections is plummeting, leading to our call for entirely new approaches to the problem.”
Dr. Spellberg, author of the book, “Rising Plague: The Global Threat from Deadly Bacteria and Our Dwindling Arsenal to Fight Them,” authored the article with Drs. John G. Bartlett and David N. Gilbert, both past presidents of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The article’s authors called for continuing the traditional practices in “infection control, antibiotic stewardship, and new antibiotic development.” But they also write that the World Economic Forum’s recent conclusion that antibiotic-resistant bacteria represent “arguably the greatest risk…to human health” underscores the need for new approaches as well.
New interventions are needed
- “to prevent infections from occurring in the first place,
- to encourage new economic models that spur investment in anti-infective treatments,
- to slow the spread of resistance in order to prolong the useful lives of antibiotics,
- to discover new ways to directly attack microbes in a manner that does not drive resistance, or to alter host-microbe interactions in order to modify disease without directly attacking microbes,” the researchers wrote.
Among their recommendations are
- stricter monitoring and controls for prescribing antibiotics and
- changes in hospital practices, including greater disinfection and
- less usage of invasive materials than can transmit antibiotic-resistant bacteria into the body.
They recommended new regulatory approaches to encourage antibiotic development, such as the Limited Population Antibiotic Drug (LPAD) proposal from the Infectious Diseases Society of America. They said this proposal would encourage the development new antibiotics by allowing their approval based on smaller, less expensive clinical trials.
They also called for new approaches to treating infections caused by bacteria. Rather than attacking the microbes causing the infection, the researchers urged scientists to pursue new courses of discovery that either “moderate the inflammatory response to infection or that limit microbial growth by blocking access to host resources without attempting to kill microbes.”
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- New Partnerships To Combat Antimicrobial Resistance At The Superbugs And Superdrugs Conference 4-5 March 2013, London (medicalnewstoday.com)
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WHO: Urgent action needed to prevent the spread of untreatable gonorrhoea
6 JUNE 2012 | GENEVA – Millions of people with gonorrhoea may be at risk of running out of treatment options unless urgent action is taken, according WHO. Already several countries, including Australia, France, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom are reporting cases of resistance to cephalosporin antibiotics – the last treatment option against gonorrhoea. Every year an estimated 106 million people are infected with gonorrhea, which is transmitted sexually.
Dwindling treatment options
“Gonorrhoea is becoming a major public health challenge, due to the high incidence of infections accompanied by dwindling treatment options,” says Dr Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, from the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at WHO. “The available data only shows the tip of the iceberg. Without adequate surveillance we won’t know the extent of resistance to gonorrhoea and without research into new antimicrobial agents, there could soon be no effective treatment for patients.”
Correct use of antibiotics needed
In new guidance issued today, WHO is calling for greater vigilance on the correct use of antibiotics and more research into alternative treatment regimens for gonococcal infections. WHO’s Global Action Plan to control the spread and impact of antimicrobial resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoea also calls for increased monitoring and reporting of resistant strains as well as better prevention, diagnosis and control of gonococcal infections.
Health implications are important
Gonorrhoea makes up one quarter of the four major curable sexually-transmitted infections1. Since the development of antibiotics, the pathogen has developed resistance to many of the common antibiotics used as treatment, including penicillin, tetracyclines and quinolones.
“We are very concerned about recent reports of treatment failure from the last effective treatment option – the class of cephalosporin antibiotics – as there are no new therapeutic drugs in development,” says Dr Lusti-Narasimhan. “If gonococcal infections become untreatable, the health implications are significant.”
Antimicrobial resistance
Antimicrobial resistance is caused by the unrestricted access to antimicrobials, overuse and poor quality of antibiotics, as well as natural genetic mutations within disease organisms. In addition, gonorrhoea strains tend to retain genetic resistance to previous antibiotics even after their use has been discontinued. The extent of this resistance worldwide is not known due to lack of reliable data for gonorrhoea in many countries and insufficient research.
Gonorrhoea
Untreated gonococcal infection can cause health problems in men, women and newborn babies including:
- infection of the urethra, cervix and rectum;
- infertility in both men and women;
- a significantly increased risk of HIV infection and transmission;
- ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and premature deliveries; and
- severe eye infections occur in 30-50% of babies born to women with untreated gonorrhoea, which can lead to blindness.
Gonorrhoea can be prevented through safer sexual intercourse. Early detection and prompt treatment, including of sexual partners, is essential to control sexually transmitted infections.
For more information please contact:
Tarik Jasarevic,
Communications Officer
Mobile: +41 793 676 214
Telephone: +41 22 791 5099
E-mail: jasarevict@who.int
Disarming Disease-Causing Bacteria
From the 5 April 2012 Science Daily article
New treatments that combat the growing problem of antibiotic resistance by disarming rather than killing bacteria may be on the horizon, according to a new study.
Published in Nature Structure and Molecular Biology, research led by Monash Universityshowed a protein complex called the Translocation and Assembly Module (TAM), formed a type of molecular pump in bacteria. The TAM allows bacteria to shuttle key disease-causing molecules from inside the bacterial cell where they are made, to the outside surface, priming the bacteria for infection.
Lead author and PhD student Joel Selkrig of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Monash said the work paves the way for future studies to design new drugs that inhibit this process.
“The TAM was discovered in many disease-causing bacteria, from micro-organisms that cause whooping cough and meningitis, to hospital-acquired bacteria that are developing resistance to current antibiotics,” Mr Selkrig said.
“It is a good antibacterial target because a drug designed to inhibit TAM function would unlikely kill bacteria, but simply deprive them of their molecular weaponry, and in doing so, disable the disease process.”
“By allowing bacteria to stay alive after antibiotic treatment, we believe we can also prevent the emergence of antibiotic resistance, which is fast becoming a major problem worldwide.”…
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Drugs Used To Overcome Cancer May Also Combat Antibiotic Resistance
Image by Ethan Hein via Flickr Antibiotic Resistance
Drugs Used To Overcome Cancer May Also Combat Antibiotic Resistance
From the Fri Dec 23, 2011 Medical News Today article
Drugs used to overcome cancer may also combat antibiotic resistance, finds a new study led by Gerry Wright, scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University. “Our study found that certain proteins, called kinases, that confer antibiotic resistance are structurally related to proteins important in cancer,” says Wright about the study published in Chemistry & Biology…
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Beating superbugs with a high-tech cleanser
Beating superbugs with a high-tech cleanser
From the 9 December Science News Daily article
According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are one of the top three threats to human health. Patients in hospitals are especially at risk, with almost 100,000 deaths due to infection every year in the U.S. alone.
Now Dr. Udi Qimron of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine has developed an efficient and cost-effective liquid solution that can help fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria and keep more patients safe from life-threatening infections. The solution is based on specially designed bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria — that can alter the genetic make-up of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. “We have genetically engineered the bacteriophages so that once they infect the bacteria, they transfer a dominant gene that confers renewed sensitivity to certain antibiotics,” explains Dr. Qimron.
The solution, recently detailed in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, could be added to common antibacterial cleansers used on hospital surfaces, turning resistant bacteria into sensitive bacteria. It’s easy to prepare, easy to apply, and non-toxic, Dr. Qimron notes. He estimates that one liter of the growth medium — the liquid in which the bacteriophages are grown — will cost just a few dollars.
…Two steps to disarming bacteria
Added to cleansers, Tellurite represents the second step in a two-part process. A Tellurite compound, which is toxic to bacteria, would also be spread on all surfaces to wipe out the bacteria that had not been rendered sensitive, and thus the entire population of the surface bacteria would be sensitized. The combination is designed to first disarm, and then kill dangerous bacteria.
Next, the solution will be tested in pre-clinical animal trials to ensure its safety before being made available for wider use at hospitals…
.
Related articles
- Beating superbugs with a high-tech cleanser (eurekalert.org)
- The Danger of Antibiotic Resistance (everydayhealth.com)
- How to Trick Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria into Being Harmless (lockergnome.com)
- Bacteriophages mobilize the antibiotic resistance of bacteria in the environment (sciencedaily.com)
- Drug-Resistant Superbugs Sweeping Across Europe (science.slashdot.org)
- New paper calls for strong steps to tackle antibiotic resistance (eurekalert.org)
- Some Superbugs Are Even More Super Than We Thought | 80beats (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
Sewage treatment plants may contribute to antibiotic resistance problem
Image via Wikipedia
From the 7 December 2011 Science Daily article
Water discharged into lakes and rivers from municipal sewage treatment plants may contain significant concentrations of the genes that make bacteria antibiotic-resistant. That’s the conclusion of a new study on a sewage treatment plant on Lake Superior in the Duluth, Minn., harbor that appears in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Timothy M. LaPara and colleagues explain that antibiotic-resistant bacteria — a major problem in medicine today — are abundant in the sewage that enters municipal wastewater treatment plants. Treatment is intended to kill the bacteria, and it removes many of the bacterial genes that cause antibiotic resistance. However, genes or bacteria may be released in effluent from the plant. In an effort to determine the importance of municipal sewage treatment plants as sources of antibiotic resistance genes, the scientists studied releases of those genes at the Duluth facility….
Related articles
- Sewage treatment plants may contribute to antibiotic resistance problem (physorg.com)
- The Danger of Antibiotic Resistance (everydayhealth.com)
- Highly Treated wastewater has higher “Super bacteria” !! (biowaves.wordpress.com)
Stopping “Superbugs” In Their Tracks
Image via Wikipedia
Stopping “Superbugs” In Their Tracks.
From the 22 November Medicine News Today article
University of Virginia Health System researchers are the first in the world to develop a new and faster method to track major infection-causing “superbugs” a major key in preventing the spread of deadly infections.
Their research, published in the November/December 2011 issue of the online journal mBio, comes at a critical time.
Several newly discovered genes such as KPC (Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase) and NDM (New Delhi metallo-betalactamase) have experts on alert for several reasons:
— their ability to easily transform bacteria into antibiotic-resistant superbugs
— their unprecedented ability to cross over into different strains and species of bacteria
— the ease with which they can transfer to highly infectious bacteria, such as Salmonella andcholera and
— the potential for these genes to easily establish themselves undetected in our environment.
“When you’re in a race against time to halt the spread of these life-threatening infections, the traditional methods of detection and tracking are very difficult and frankly take too long,” says UVA Medical Center Epidemiologist Costi Sifri, MD, study principal investigator.
Decoding deadly hospital-acquired infections
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- Europe in the Grip of Drug-resistant Superbugs (maboulette.wordpress.com)
- Scientists find new superbug strain of salmonella. (ascleses.wordpress.com)
- Europe Attacked by Superbugs | And what it will do about it (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
- Superbugs could make surgery life threatening in future (news.bioscholar.com)
- Drug-Resistant Superbugs Sweeping Across Europe (science.slashdot.org)
- Antibiotics that Fight Superbugs (bigthink.com)
- Targeting MRSA Toxin Possible Way To Treat Superbugs (medicalnewstoday.com)
- Superbug enzyme ‘photofit’ taken (bbc.co.uk)
No Antibiotics For Future Infections? Possible If Nothing Is Done Today
Antibiotic resistance
No Antibiotics For Future Infections? Possible If Nothing Is Done Today
From the 17 November 2011 Medical News Today article
The world is moving towards the unthinkable scenario of untreatable infections as fewer antibacterial drugs are discovered and more and more people are becoming resistant to existing drugs, researchers from University of Birmingham, England, reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The article coincides with the European Antibiotics Awareness Day, and warns about the urgency of the situation and the actions needed to turn it around.
People have become so used to antibioticsbeing readily available that there is no sense of urgency regarding the lack of new drugs, or in existing antibiotic’s essential tasks to prolong life.
A wide spectrum of medical procedures, including many elderly people whose immune system has weakened, rely on antibiotics to fend off opportunistic infections. Even fairly simple procedures, for example, transrectal prostate biopsies that are typically used to detectprostate cancer, become problematic because of antibiotic resistant infections.
Author Professor Laura Piddock explains:
“When patients are denied treatment with a new cancer drug because of its expense, there is public outrage despite the possibility of extending life by only a few weeks. Antibiotics are not perceived as essential to health or the practice of medicine, despite such agents saving lives so that individuals can live for many years after infection.”
According to an announcement made by the WHO (World Health Organization) 2 years ago, antibiotic resistance is one of the three biggest health threats, yet politicians, the public, and the media have been slow to understand the urgency of the situation. …
…
Put simply: The pharmaceutical industry finds that after spending a lot of money developing a new drug, they are then faced with many regulatory barriers, only to find that when their new medication is finally approved, it is not effective for long because the bacterium rapidly develops resistance to it.
One serious problem is the approach of drug trials for antibiotics. Researchers recruit people with infections who are not necessarily infected with the bacteria that the drug is designed to kill, which in turn affects efficacy results.
According to Professor Piddock, this problem could be eliminated by using point-of-care tests to identify the precise bacteria causing the infection and excluding that particular individual from the study if they do not have the bacterium which is being targeted. The number of people required for a trial is currently prohibitively high, yet an approach like this would reduce the number of people needed for each trial, and also ensure that those participating receive the drug that is specifically targeted to their infection.
The profile of this issue must be raised in order to overcome the barriers to new antibiotic discovery and development. In response to this, the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy has launched Antibiotic Action, a campaign that has already obtained worldwide support, from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, ReACT, charities, and not-for-profit agencies amongst others.
All these initiatives represent patients who depend on effective antibiotic treatment.
Professor Piddock states:
“As absence of new antibiotics affects everyone, shifting this issue out of the medical arena and into the public eye is paramount, which will stimulate governments to act. To do this, Antibiotic Action is using the latest communication methods including Twitter; this approach will assist as many individuals as possible to sign one of two on-line petitions, one for UK citizens and another for those from outside the UK.” (http://antibiotic-action.com/petition/ )
Related articles
- Government Facing Ticking Time Bomb Over Lack of Desperately Needed New Antibiotics, warns Antibiotic Action (prweb.com)
- New clinical trial approach reduces time and costs of many studies (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
From an April 8 2011 Stanford School of Medicine Press Release
ScienceDaily (Apr. 8, 2011) — Doctors at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System are testing a new kind of clinical trial that’s not only less costly but guides doctors to switch to the best treatment even before the trial is completed. The new approach — called a point-of-care clinical trial — was developed by Stanford University biostatistician Philip Lavori, PhD, and a Boston-based team as an alternative to expensive, lengthy, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials to compare drugs and procedures that are already in regular use.
“The goal of point-of-care clinical trials is to deliver the best care to patients while learning from each experience and redefining that care,” said Lavori, a professor of health research and policy at Stanford’s School of Medicine and the senior author of an article on the method to be published online April 4 in Clinical Trials. “This ‘learning and improving’ loop will enable health-care institutions to more rapidly fold improvements into their medical practices,” he said….
…”The idea of embedding research into clinical care has been around for quite awhile but to my knowledge this is the first time that a randomized trial has been fully integrated into a hospital’s informatics system,” said Fiore. “It demonstrates an effective way to use electronic medical records to improve health care at a local level.”…
- People believe ‘antibiotic myths’ (bbc.co.uk)
- European Antibiotics Awareness Day (2020health.wordpress.com)
- GPs told to resist antibiotics requests for coughs and colds (guardian.co.uk)
- Antibiotics will never cure a cold (aboundingwellness.wordpress.com)
- Health Tip: Why Antibiotic Resistance Is Serious (nlm.nih.gov)
What Bacteria Don’t Know Can Hurt Them
From the 17 November 2011 Science Daily article
Many infections, even those caused by antibiotic-sensitive bacteria, resist treatment. This paradox has vexedphysicians for decades, and makes some infections impossible to cure.
A key cause of this resistance is that bacteria become starved for nutrients during infection. Starved bacteria resist killing by nearly every type of antibiotic, even ones they have never been exposed to before.
What produces starvation-induced antibiotic resistance, and how can it be overcome? In a paper appearing this week in Science, researchers report some surprising answers.
“Bacteria become starved when they exhaust nutrient supplies in the body, or if they live clustered together in groups known as biofilms,” said the lead author of the paper, Dr. Dao Nguyen, an assistant professor of medicine at McGill University.
Biofilms are clusters of bacteria encased in a slimy coating, and can be found both in the natural environment as well as in human tissues where they cause disease. For example, biofilm bacteria grow in the scabs of chronic wounds, and the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis. Bacteria in biofilms tolerate high levels of antibiotics without being killed…
Related articles
- Health Tip: Why Antibiotic Resistance Is Serious (nlm.nih.gov)
- Antibiotic Resistance – A Public Health Issue (regcompliance.wordpress.com)
- GPs told to resist antibiotics requests for coughs and colds (guardian.co.uk)
- Growth Promotion Use Of Antibiotics In Farming: Evidence Supports Ban (medicalnewstoday.com)
- Highly Treated wastewater has higher “Super bacteria” !! (biowaves.wordpress.com)
- How to Trick Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria into Being Harmless (lockergnome.com)
- Key regulators for biofilm development discovered (physorg.com)
- Wastewater treatment fosters antibiotic resistance? (junkscience.com)
- Antibiotic-resistant infections spread through Europe (independent.co.uk)
- GPs ‘Must Stop’ Overuse Of Antibiotics (news.sky.com)
- Fighting fire with fire: ‘Vampire’ bacteria has potential as living antibiotic (eurekalert.org)
- Are antibiotics bad for your stomach? (zocdoc.com)
- Bacteria responsible for common infections may protect themselves by stealing immune molecules (eurekalert.org)
Novel Index For Tracking Drug Resistance – Drug Resistance Index
Image via Wikipedia, A schematic representation of how antibiotic resistance is enhanced by natural selection,
From the 17 November 2011 Medical News Today article
Ramanan Laxminarayan, Director of Extending the Cure, and Keith P. Klugman, Professor of Global Health at Emory University describe a novel index for tracking resistance in a report published in this week’s British Medical Journal Open.
Similar to a Consumer Price Index (CPI) but for drug resistance, the tool accumulates information of resistance trends andantibiotic use into one single measure of antibiotic resistance over time. The DRI is designed for application at any level, from local hospitals to national healthcare system surveillance. It can be used by hospitals to track their own resistance levels and to measure their own success of interventions, such as antibiotic stewardship and infection control programs.
The researchers explain how the index can be applied to evaluate trends in resistance linked to two disease-causing microorganisms, namely Escherichia coli and Acinetobacter baumannii. It is also able to highlight how physicians adapt to resistance trends. In this analysis for example, the index displayed how physicians were able to use other drugs for treating resistant strains of E. coli infections, and how very few options remained for treating Acinetobacter, a super bug, which is more and more resistant to all available antibiotics. Laxminarayan declared: ……
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- Overprescribed: The problem with antibiotics (junkscience.com)
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- Drug-resistant infections: A new epidemic, and what you can do to help (medicalxpress.com)
- Different Paths To Drug Resistance In Leishmania (medicalnewstoday.com)
- FDA Denies Petitions to Ban Certain Antibiotics in Livestock (thechefstableblog.com)
- FDA To Reject Antibiotic Ban (treehugger.com)
Even The Cleanest Wastewater Contributes To More ‘Super Bacteria’
Image via Wikipedia
From the 16 November 2011 Medical News Today article
A new University of Minnesota study reveals that the release of treated municipal wastewater – even wastewater treated by the highest-quality treatment technology – can have a significant effect on the quantities of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, often referred to as “superbacteria,” in surface waters.
The study also suggests that wastewater treated using standard technologies probably contains far greater quantities of antibiotic-resistant genes, but this likely goes unnoticed because background levels of bacteria are normally much higher than the water studied in this research.
The new study is led by civil engineering associate professor Timothy LaPara in the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities College of Science and Engineering. The study is published in the most recent issue ofEnvironmental Science and Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society. The research was part of a unique class project in a graduate-level civil engineering class at the University of Minnesota focused on environmental microbiology.
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- Wastewater recycling can multiply greenhouse gas emissions (eurekalert.org)
- Researchers study micropollutants in wastewater (kitsapsun.com)
- EPA: To Regulate Disposal of Fracking Wastewater (abcnews.go.com)
Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics: The More They Resist, the More They Divide
These are Escherichia coli colonies growing on a petri dish. (Credit: Sílvia Mendonça)
From the 28 July 2011 Science Daily article
The number of multiresistant strains of bacteria in hospitals is increasing. Bacteria acquire resistance to antibiotics through mutations in their chromosomes and by incorporating new genes, either from the surrounding environment or from other bacteria. Now, a research team at the Portuguese CBA research (University of Lisbon) and the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência has shown that, surprisingly, when both mechanisms of resistance are playing out in the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli), its ability to survive and reproduce is increased.
Read article
Journal Reference:
Rui F. Silva, Sílvia C. M. Mendonça, Luís M. Carvalho, Ana M. Reis, Isabel Gordo, Sandra Trindade, Francisco Dionisio. Pervasive Sign Epistasis between Conjugative Plasmids and Drug-Resistance Chromosomal Mutations. PLoS Genetics, 2011; 7 (7): e1002181 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1002181
Related articles
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- Antibiotics Beat Cranberries at Fighting Urinary Tract Infections in Study (nlm.nih.gov)
- Exposure to low levels of antibiotics turns E. coli bug more drug resistant (news.bioscholar.com)
- E. coli bacteria more likely to develop resistance after exposure to low levels of antibiotics, reports a study in Microbial Drug Resistance (eurekalert.org)
- Antibiotics to Treat Infections Caused by Gram Negative Bacteria (brighthub.com)
Antimicrobial Resistance Posing Growing Health Threat
CDC and Partners Celebrate World Health Day 2011 to Draw Attention to the Issue
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria
Source: Public Health Image Library (PHIL)
Excerpts from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) press release
Millions of Americans take antimicrobial drugs each year to fight illness, trusting they will work. However, the bacteria, viruses and other pathogens are fighting back. Within the past couple of years alone, new drug-resistant patterns have emerged and resistance has increased – a trend that demands urgent action to preserve the last lines of defense against many of these germs. Today, CDC joins theWorld Health Organization and other health partners in recognizing World Health Day, which this year spotlights antimicrobial resistance.
“People assume that antibiotics will always be there to fight the worst infections, but antimicrobial resistance is robbing us of that certainty and new drug-resistant pathogens are emerging,” said CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “It’s not enough to hope that we’ll have effective drugs to combat these infections. We must all act now to safeguard this important resource.”
Antimicrobial resistance—when germs change in a way that reduces or eliminates the effectiveness of drugs to treat them—is a growing global problem. Plasmodium falciparum, the most dangerous of the malaria parasites, has developed resistance to nearly all of the currently available antimalarial drugs in parts of Southeast Asia. Sporadic cases of pandemic H1N1 flu have shown resistance to oseltamivir, one of only two antivirals that work against it. In the United States, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA, remains a problem in many health care settings. Drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, previously seen in a limited number of hospitals, has now been reported in at least 36 states. Gonorrhea is now showing potential for resistance to cephalosporins, the only recommended antibiotic left to treat this common sexually transmitted infection.
Antibiotic resistance increases the economic burden on the entire health care system. Resistant infections are often more severe, leading to longer hospital stays and increased costs for treatment. According to the latest available data, antibiotic resistance in the United States costs an estimated $20 billion a year in excess health care costs, $35 million in other societal costs and more than 8 million additional days that people spend in the hospital.
As part of this effort, CDC—in collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other partners—recently released a public health action plan laying out 11 key goals to combat antimicrobial resistance in the areas of surveillance, prevention and control, research and product development. The plan is designed to facilitate communication and coordination as well to provide guidance on the most pressing resistance issues and how to address them….
…Appropriate use of existing antibiotics can limit the spread of antibiotic resistance, preserving antibiotics for the future. CDC advocates for the appropriate use of antibiotics through its Get Smart programs focused on community and health care settings. CDC is engaged in working to address antimicrobial resistance across a growing number of disease-causing organisms and settings.
The public can also play a role in reducing the threat of antimicrobial resistance by not pressuring their health care providers for antibiotics, not sharing or saving antibiotics, and taking antibiotics exactly as prescribed, including taking the entire amount prescribed. Health care providers can prevent antimicrobial resistance by ensuring prompt diagnosis and treatment of infections, prescribing antibiotics appropriately, and following infection prevention techniques to prevent the spread of drug-resistant infections in health care facilities.
To learn more about antimicrobial resistance by disease and setting, please visithttp://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/f0407_antimicrobialresistance.html. For more information on CDC’s antimicrobial resistance efforts, please visit http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/index.html.
The action plan is posted on the Federal Register and comments on the plan will be accepted through April 15, 2011. To view the action plan, please visit:http://wwwn.cdc.gov/publiccomments/comments/a-public-health-action-plan-to-combat-antimicrobial-resistance-draft.aspx.
Related Articles
- Interactive map helps visualize drug resistance data (one.org)
- FDA warns companies to stop making MRSA claims for over-the-counter products (April 20, 2011)
- Hand Sanitizers Carry Unproven Claims to Prevent MRSA Infections (April 20, 2011)
- MRSA eliminated by copper in live global broadcast (scienceblog.com)
- Bacteria are winning the war (guardian.co.uk)
- Lifesaving antibiotics face doubtful future (eurekalert.org)
- WHO Warns That Drug Misuse Weakens Fight Against Diseases (lostchildreninthewilderness.wordpress.com)
- Honey can reverse antibiotic resistance (scienceblog.com)
- Tests find drug-resistant bacteria in meat (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- World Health Day 2011! (nursingadream.wordpress.com)
- Studies Highlight Challenge of Controlling Resistant Bacteria in Hospitals
One found extra precautions helped reduce infections, while the other did not (Health Day) -
Health Care-Associated Infections Are Exacerbated by Alcohol Use Disorders, Study Finds (Science Daily)
- Can The International Health Regulations Apply To Antimicrobial Resistance? (medicalnewstoday.com)
- Bacteria interrupted: Disabling coordinated behavior and virulence gene expression (21 April 2011)
New research reveals a strategy for disrupting the ability of bacteria to communicate and coordinate the expression of virulence factors. The study may lead to the development of new antibacterial therapeutics.
- Antimicrobial Resistance Posing Growing Health Threat (nlm.nih.gov)
- Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Have Evolved A Unique Chemical Mechanism, New Discovery Reveals (Medical News Today April 2011)
About
This blog presents a sampling of health and medical news and resources for all. Selected articles and resources will hopefully be of general interest but will also encourage further reading through posted references and other links. Currently I am focusing on public health, basic and applied research and very broadly on disease and healthy lifestyle topics.
Several times a month I will post items on international and global health issues. My Peace Corps Liberia experience (1980-81) has formed me as a global citizen in many ways and has challenged me to think of health and other topics in a more holistic manner.
Do you have an informational question in the health/medical area?
Email me at jmflahiff@yahoo.com
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My professional work experience and education includes over 15 years experience as a medical librarian and a Master’s in Library Science. In my most recent position I enjoyed contributing to our library’s blog, performing in depth literature searches, and collaborating with faculty, staff, students, and the general public.
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Health and Medical News and Resources 