antibiotics
mikethemadbiologist | November 4, 2006Occasionally, Congress does something right. In this case, they are making research to develop new antibiotics a priority:
A key Senate committee is supporting more antibiotic research and development and more research into the mechanisms of resistance at the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
As a result of the efforts of IDSA and others to raise awareness about the need for effective drugs to treat resistant infections, the Senate Appropriations Committee has included language in its report for the bill funding NIAID urging the agency to "move aggressively to…
mikethemadbiologist | October 26, 2006I have discussed the "search and destroy" strategy for controlling and reducing methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) before. Search-and-destroy involves the screening of every patient and hospital worker for MRSA.
Patients with MRSA are isolated to prevent spread to other patients. In the Netherlands, hospital workers with MRSA are sent home with pay, and are treated with muriopicin nasal drops (MRSA usually lives up your nose). In addition, the workers' family is screened along with any pets, and those that have MRSA are also treated. Because of this program, the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 23, 2006The NY Times recently had a very good article about strep throat, which is caused by group A streptococci (which, if I'm not mistaken are near and dear to fellow ScienceBlogling Tara). Sore throats are one of the leading causes of the overprescribing of antibiotics (it's been estimated that 20% of all antibiotic prescriptions are incorrectly prescribed to treat viral infections, including sore throats), which leads to the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria:
Symptoms of a strep throat and a sore throat caused by a virus can overlap (children may experience stuffy noses, coughs and…
mikethemadbiologist | October 19, 2006At least when it comes to killing young children in the developing world. A recent Lancet article describes the devastation pneumonia causes among children:
Pneumonia kills more children than any other illness, more than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined... More than 2 million children under 5 years of age die from pneumonia each year, accounting for almost one in five under-5 deaths worldwide. Yet few headlines report the effect of pneumonia on children's lives.
The world's attention has under standably turned to other major public-health scourges, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and…
mikethemadbiologist | October 18, 2006By day, I work for an organization that combats the spread of antibiotic resistant microorganisms. One source of antibiotic resistance is the misuse of antibiotics by patients. Often patients will stop using antibiotics early because they feel better. Not only does this make it more likely that the treatment will fail, but the bacterium has been exposed to a lower dose of antibiotics, selecting for 'intermediately' resistant organisms, which is often the first evolutionary step towards therapeutic resistance (i.e., the antibiotic won't work against these organisms).
But reading the…
mikethemadbiologist | September 30, 2006Since I'm going away for a long weekend, I'll leave you with this post about phage therapy from the archives.
So Aetiology, in her new digs, wants a post. Well, here's one, inspired by a comment: phage therapy. "Phage therapy" is short for bacteriophage therapy. Bacteriophage are viruses that kill bacteria (literally, "bacteria devourers"). The basic concept of phage therapy is to introduce the phage into an infected patient. The phage infect the bacterium-an infection of an infection! Then the phage multiply within the bacterium, lyse (explode from the inside) the host bacterium and…
mikethemadbiologist | September 20, 2006Geneticists often use the phrase wild type to describe the dominant allele--genetic variant--of a gene. In microbiology, we typically assume that the wild type of a bacterium is sensitive to antibiotics, and that the rare mutants (and recombinants) are antibiotic resistant.
My colleague, Susan Foster, at the end of a seminar she presented to clinicians in Southern California, asked her audience to anonymously write down the percentage of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at their hospitals.
The result?
The median percentage of methicillin resistance was 60% (the average was…
mikethemadbiologist | September 18, 2006Over at Viva la Evolucion!, there's a new edition of Animalcules, the Carnival o'the Wee Beasties. I have a post there. There's also a really good post about Vibrio cholerae--the critter that causes cholera.
mikethemadbiologist | September 11, 2006It's good to see antibiotic resistance as today's "Buzz in the Blogosphere." Ironically, this weekend I had started putting together a post about how this issue isn't given the attention it deserves.
Antibiotic resistance is a silent plague: the CDC estimates that 14,000 people per year in the U.S. die from hospital-acquired resistant bacterial infections--this figure doesn't include resistant infections acquired outside the hospital. These figures are certainly underestimates because the mortality due to hospital-acquired infections is dramatically underreported. Also, the reporting of…
mikethemadbiologist | September 3, 2006A recent study demonstrates that treatment failure of P. aeruginosa pneumonia infections due to antibiotic resistance is critical: a resistant infection is four times as likely to kill a patient as a sensitive one.
Mortality Rate Is Twice As High In Patients With Pneumonia Caused By Highly Resistant Bacteria
Patients suffering from hospital-acquired pneumonia caused by a type of bacteria that is highly resistant to virtually all antibiotics are twice as likely to die as patients infected with other, less resistant bacteria.
A study published recently in the journal Critical Care shows for…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2006One of the 'low tech' life-saving advances for HIV patients has been the prophylactic use of the antibiotic cotrimoxazole. Cotrimoxazole, a combination of two antibiotics, trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole, is effective against bacteria, including Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia ("PCP") and toxoplasmosis, two of the leading killers of AIDS patients. The WHO's support of universal prophylaxis of HIV patients with cotrimoxazole will greatly increase the adoption of this critical disease prevention strategy.
Many developing countries have been reluctant to adopt the use of this drug as a…
mikethemadbiologist | August 12, 2006By now, you might have heard about the Science article examining the acceptance of evolution in 34 countries. I don't have much else to say that PZ, Shelley, John, and Nick Matzke haven't said already. But I have some additional good news and bad news. The bad news is that we're even more stupid that we thought: 30% of Americans don't know what year the 9/11 attacks were, and five percent can't identify the month and the day of the 9/11 attacks.
The good news is that I was at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory to give a lecture about antibiotic resistance to high school teachers…
mikethemadbiologist | August 11, 2006Since I'm off to Woods Hole to give a lecture about antibiotic resistance, I thought this interview from the old site with Dr. Henrik C. Wegener about antibiotics and agriculture would be appropriate.
In looking through some things at work, I came across this interview with Henrik C. Wegener, Ph.D., Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Antimicrobial Research and Foodborne Pathogens and the Danish Institute for Food and Veterinary Research about antibiotics and agriculture. It's from 2004, but it's still pretty good (it's interesting how, on the internet, once something gets past two…
mikethemadbiologist | August 9, 2006Joseph beat me to it: there's a Nature article about platensimycin, an antibiotic that inhibits lipid biosynthesis in Gram positive bacteria. While it's not in human trials yet, it's always good to have another antibiotic that's effective against MRSA and VRE. Now, if it only worked against Acinetobacter...
mikethemadbiologist | August 9, 2006There's a very interesting article in Emerging Infectious Diseases about which risk factors are likely to result in an increased likelihood of a macrolide (a class of antibiotics) resistant Streptococcus pneumonial infection. One important factor: having failed to take a full course of antibiotic therapy in the previous six months. In other words, patients didn't listen to their doctor. Usually, the arguments for responsible use of antibiotics revolve around not making a general problem worse for others. Here we have pretty compelling evidence that if you're stupid and don't do what your…
mikethemadbiologist | July 30, 2006
And if a lot of people actually take charlatan Kevin Trudeau seriously, we'll be seeing a lot of dead people. Stupid, dead people. Christopher Wanjek and Orac take down the fraud Kevin Trudeau's new book More Natural Cures Revealed. Writes Wanjek:
Bacteria and viruses don't cause disease, which is why you don't "catch" cancer or diabetes; disease is caused by an imbalance of vital energy. Here Trudeau mixes the concept of communicable and non-communicable disease. First, Trudeau needs to visit Uganda with his balanced vital energy and avoid malaria. This denial of pathogens as the cause…
mikethemadbiologist | July 29, 2006While the main reason to use antibiotics only when needed is to preserve their effectiveness, it's always nice to have an economic incentive coupled with proper use of these important drugs. From the Guernsey Press and Star:
The States prescribing support unit is claiming success in a campaign to encourage islanders to think more carefully about their need for the drugs.
Prescriptions fell by 983 courses - a reduction of 3.3% on the previous year - between October 2005 and March 2006, reducing costs to the States by £30,000.
'That is a significant reduction in what is the peak season for…
mikethemadbiologist | July 28, 2006From the archives, comes this post about the health crisis no one cares about (except for the Mad Biologist. We are very caring): the 90,000 deaths per year from infections people get while in the hospital. And this number is probably an underestimate.
Bacterial infections aren't sexy: no one walks, bikes, hops, pogo sticks for the cure. There are no ribbons, no bumper stickers, and no hot celebrities (damn!). Yet, according to the CDC, bacterial infections acquired in hospitals kill at least 90,000 people per year in the U.S. Granted some of those who died would have died from something…
mikethemadbiologist | July 27, 2006Lest you think corporate interference in public health policy is solely a U.S. problem, New Zealand is suffering a brain drain in the area of antibiotic resistance research due to political pressure hindering research on the effects of antbiotic use in agriculture. Worldwide, antibiotics are widely used in poultry production, but in the U.S., there was a successful attempt to ban the use of enrofloxacin (a ciprofloxacin analogue commonly known as "Cipro") in poultry production (enrofloxacin is already banned in other forms of meat production).
From the Sunday Star Times:
Scientists say…
mikethemadbiologist | July 13, 2006A recent Harris survey reveals that 61% of children aged eight to eighteen think that viruses can be stopped by antibiotics. The Harris Interactive summary explains why this matters (italics mine):
Today's young people, tweens (ages 8 to 12) and teens (ages 13 to 18) are raised in a world where potentially deadly viruses frequently make news headlines. In addition to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), recent public attention has also focused on viruses such as those which cause bird flu (avian influenza), Human Papillomavirus…