C. difficile has shown antibiotic resistance in people. Now it's shown to be resistant to efforts to destroy it on surfaces by cleaning. By Erika Edwards Dangerous bacteria that pose a particular threat to the elderly and very sick hospital patients have been shown to survive on disposable hospital gowns and stainless steel surfaces — even [...]
Abstract Antibiotics are a medical wonder, but an increasing frequency of resistance among most human pathogens is rendering them ineffective. If this trend continues, the consequences for public health and for the general community could be catastrophic. The current clinical pipeline, however, is very limited and is dominated by derivatives of established classes, the [...]
Abstract Tucson, Arizona, USA, is a highly coccidioidomycosis-endemic area. We conducted a retrospective review of 815 patients in Tucson over 2.7 years. Of 276 patients with coccidioidomycosis, 246 had a delay in diagnosis; median delay was 23 days. Diagnosis delay was associated with coccidioidomycosis-related costs totaling $589,053 and included extensive antibacterial drug use. Coccidioidomycosis, also [...]
Health workers have started a massive measles vaccination campaign in north-east Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a region that’s in the grip of the second deadliest Ebola virus outbreak on record. UN Children’s Fund UNICEF said on Thursday that it aims to inoculate 67,000 children in Ituri province. They’re just a small fraction of the 400,000 people displaced [...]
Yesterday the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) said that ministry of health and government officials have agreed that Merck's rVSV-ZEBOV is the only vaccine that will be used during the current, ever-growing Ebola outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. "Due to the lack of sufficient scientific evidence on the efficacy and safety of [...]
Abstract Background Vector control remains the primary method to prevent dengue infections. Environmental interventions represent sustainable and safe methods as there are limited risks of environmental contamination and toxicity. The objective of this study is to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of the following environmental methods for dengue vector control. Methodology/Principal [...]
Biopharmaceutical company Appili Therapeutics Inc. announced that it will receive a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to fund its AT1-1503 antibiotic program, which targets gram-negative ESKAPE pathogens. ESKAPE pathogens — Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species — have become increasingly problematic in recent years because of the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture [...]
Abstract Background Noroviruses are the major cause of viral gastroenteritis. Disease transmission is difficult to prevent and outbreaks in healthcare facilities commonly occur. Contact with infected persons and contaminated environments are believed to be the main routes of transmission. However, noroviruses have recently been found in aerosols and airborne transmission has been suggested. The aim [...]
Asthma is a common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways, which continues to cause considerable morbidity and unnecessary mortality across the world [1, 2]. The recognition that even mild asthma is associated with airway inflammation led to the early and widespread use of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) from the 1970s onwards [3, 4], transforming asthma care by significantly [...]
Interdisciplinary collaboration between Max Planck, Harvard researchers bears fruit New research on one of history’s most devastating plagues shows that it spread farther than previously believed, reaching post–Roman Britain, and provides new information about the plague bacteria’s evolution during a pandemic that lasted more than 200 years. The work, conducted by an interdisciplinary team from [...]
