Various bacteria

As Maryn McKenna and others have reported, a paper was released on Friday showing a high percentage of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus contaminating raw, retail-available meat products. There has been a lot of media coverage of this finding--so what does the study say, and what are its implications? More after the jump. First, a bit about S. aureus itself, and why this study was carried out. Historically, Staph has been a relatively common cause of food poisoning. The bacterium produces toxins that can collect to a high level when prepared foods are left at room temperature, such as…
We all know of once-respected scientists who ended up going off the deep end, adhering to an unproven idea despite massive evidence to the contrary. Linus Pauling and his advocacy of megadoses of Vitamin C, or Peter Duesberg's descent into HIV denial. It's all the more disappointing when the one taking a dive is a woman, since there are, compared to men, relatively fewer female "big names" in the sciences. So when one goes from views that were, perhaps, outside of the mainstream (but later proven largely correct) to complete science denialism, it makes it all the more depressing. Even worse,…
One of the reasons I've not been blogging as much over the past 2 years or so is that it's been just insane in the lab. As I was still living off start-up funds and pilot grants, I didn't have anyone full-time to take care of everything, so all the work has been done by myself and a handful of excellent graduate & undergrad students. Happily, some of the initial projects are wrapping up, and publications are starting to come out (I'll be blogging about others in the coming days/weeks). One of them was published yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases: Livestock-associated…
Over at the Worms and Germs blog, Scott Weese has a great post on MRSA testing. He notes the he's frequently asked by human MRSA patients whether their pet should be tested as well, since several studies have documented transmission of MRSA between humans and their companion animals. His first response is always, "why?" One big question I ask is 'why do you want to know and what would you do with the results?' Sometimes people want to know their pet's status to see if the pet was the source of their infection. However, MRSA in pets is typically human-associated, and if a pet is carrying…
It's been a busy few months. I'll have some additional announcements (and long-overdue book reviews) coming up soon, but in the meantime, one of my projects is humming along and is to the point where I can provide some detailed information about it. Those of you who follow American Society for Microbiology conference announcements (and who doesn't, right?) may have seen the announcement for this mouthful of a conference: the 2nd ASM-ESCMID Conference on Methicillin-resistant Staphylococci in Animals. The previous incarnation was in London, but this year it's coming stateside, so mark your…
Blogging from Atlanta at ICEID, the perfect venue to highlight today's story in the NY Times by Carl Zimmer discussing gut microbes in health and disease--including an introduction focusing on fecal transplants to treat Clostridium difficile infections. If you're at ICEID, be sure to swing by several posters in both sessions today showing new work (ours and others') on zoonotic MRSA.
Student guest post by Desiré Christensen Colorectal cancer (aka colon cancer) includes cancers of the colon, rectum, and appendix. Colorectal cancer is more common in developed countries (e.g. United States and Japan) compared to developing countries in Africa and Asia. Each year in the United States, there are around 150,000 cases of colorectal cancer diagnosed and about 50,000 people die from this cancer. Risk factors for colorectal cancer include lifestyle factors (e.g. habitual alcohol use; high-fat, low-fiber diet; obesity; sedentary lifestyle; smoking), family history of intestinal…
Student guest post by Liz Stepniak In the field of chronic disease, genetics has long been determined as a component of disease susceptibility. Infectious disease was believed to be caused by an agent of infection, such as a virus or bacteria which comprises a large environmental factor. In the past decade or so, this view has been expanded to include an important genetic factor as well. There has been scientific evidence supporting the controversial idea that one error in a single gene can significantly alter the individual's risk of obtaining a bacterial infection. Can infectious…
Student guest post by D.F. Johnston As the year marches forward, ever closer to that summer sun we missed so much during dreary winter days, we also get closer to the traditional summer picnics and barbecues. Sometimes, in our hurry to enjoy quality time with friends and family, we get distracted from our usual practices for proper food handling. We might try to get little Billy his hamburger before he has time for a full-fledged temper tantrum, so we hurry it along, figuring a tiny bit of pink in the middle won't be the end of the world. Or we might realize that we're short a couple of…
Student guest post by Ahn To There are two separate philosophies regarding the relationship between life and food. There are those that believe we only eat to live. On the other hand, there are those that believe one of life's greatest pleasures is food. I am a firm believer of the latter, thus, you can imagine my horror when I first learned of celiac disease (CD). This is a disease with no treatment except for a lifetime on a gluten-free diet, thus people with CD cannot eat many types of food. I knew then that I had to find out more about causation of CD, which includes the complex…
Student guest post by Shylo Wardyn I recently read the book 'Good Germs, Bad Germs' by Jessica Snyder Sachs. I became intrigued by parts of her book that discussed how babies become colonized with bacteria during birth. The most interesting part was the differences between vaginally-delivered and Caesarean-delivered babies. It was not something I had ever thought of before. With my interest piqued, I did a Google scholar search to see what kind of research was being done on this topic. I stumbled upon an article looking at C-sections and risk of childhood allergies, namely asthma. I…
Student guest post by Jay Watson We've all been there at some point before: a hot summer day, your delicious ice cream cone or tasty treat, and that uneven sidewalk. After taking about ten steps away from the vendor, you mistakenly put your foot into a gigantic fault in the sidewalk and accidentally toss your tasty treat face-down into the pavement. For many of us, "what now?" is actually a deliberation of a bunch of different, yet seemingly important questions: Who is watching me? How hungry am I? How much did it cost? Does this thing look dirty? Can I salvage most of it? But perhaps…
Student guest post by Liz Stepniak In the United States, the obesity epidemic is rapidly spreading. Since 1980 the prevalence of obesity has increased over 75%. Currently, over half the population is overweight, and nearly 1 in every 3 adults is clinically obese. Research has also been proliferating, exploring a plethora of possibilities to better understand and treat this growing epidemic. One of the recent trends in obesity research has been investigating the role of the microbiota in the gut and differences in the composition of these bacteria between obese and non-obese individuals.…
A little over a year ago I put a post up documenting research out of Canada which found methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in Canadian pigs. This had also been seen in Europe (with a lot of research coming out of the Netherlands). What I didn't note at the time was that we were gearing up to start some sampling of our own on area swine farms. Some of you saw that we presented the results of that research last year at ICEID and ASM; now the paper is out describing our pilot project in PLoS ONE. (Note: the paper was available earlier, but now they seem to have removed it…
I know I have many promised posts, and I'll get to them one day. Alas, the family and day job come before blogging, and I've been swamped with ongoing projects, grant applications, and manuscripts. I've been so busy, in fact, that revere over at Effect Measure beat me to the punch on my own upcoming paper, looking at antibodies to Streptococcus suis in Iowa swine workers. The paper is scheduled for the December issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, but the unedited draft is already up in their ahead of print section. As revere already has a good overview of the paper, I'll just point…
So, after almost a week of intense media scrutiny and finger-pointing at USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks, the FBI has now released its documents pertaining to the case, and declares that Ivins was indeed their man. However, a lot of unanswered questions remain--about the investigation itself, the whole mess surrounding the anthrax attacks and what they meant to the "war on terror," and the science itself that linked the attack strain to Ivins' lab. A few of the remaining issues are discussed below... First, as Glenn Greenwald notes, there was…
Real life work has once again stepped in, so I won't have the Helicobacter posts up until next week. However, in the meantime, a big story has broken regarding the 2001 anthrax attacks--a potential suspect, and his suicide before he could be arrested. Will we ever actually get to the bottom of this? More discussion below... A bit of a primer on the anthrax attacks, as it's been awhile since they were in the news. Recall that just after the chaos of 9/11 in 2001, envelopes containing anthrax were sent to a number of news organizations and senators, resulting in 22 cases of anthrax and 5…
An interesting new paper is just out today in PLoS ONE. You recall the announcement a few years back that soft tissue that resembled organic tissue had been isolated from a Tyrannosaurus femur. This started off a huge controversy in the field (and beyond)--researchers disagreeing with each other whether the structures seen were indeed blood cells and vessels; creationists crowing about how this finding represented "proof" that the earth was indeed young and dinosaurs had existed just a few thousand years ago; and of course, talk of cloning and DNA analysis. On the side of "soft tissue =…
Helicobacter pylori is, by bacteriological standards, a relative newcomer to medicine. Although its pathogenesis has been studied for only about the past 20 years, there are reports from as far back as the late 19th century of small, helical bacteria in the stomachs of some patients. Largely these anecdotal reports were relegated to the "hmm, interesting" file and not followed up for many years. It wasn't necessarily that others didn't follow (or care about) the research; the lack of studies on them, despite occasional reports in the literature, is probably due more to the fact that we hadn…
Revere once again is the voice of reason regarding latest developments in Tomatogate (e.g., the ongoing outbreak of Salmonella, serovar Saintpaul). Has the source been identified? For those of you who many not have been following this closely, the outbreak has now hit almost every state, with over 1200 confirmed cases identified since April and more than 200 hospitalizations. Though the outbreak was initially associated with tomatoes, investigators were unable to link tomatoes to the specific strain--a relatively rare one--and advice to consumers to avoid varieties of tomatoes didn't put…