antimicrobial resistance
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FDA Update On Animal Pharmaceutical Industry Response To Guidance #213
On December 11, 2013, the FDA announced the implementation of its plan to help phase out the use of medically important antimicrobials in food animals for food production purposes. [...] FDA asked affected sponsors to notify the agency in writing within three months, or by March 12, 2014, of their intent to engage with FDA as defined in Guidance for Industry (GFI) #213. Read More »
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First Nations’ Ancient Medicinal Clay Shows Promise Against Today’s Worst Bacterial Infections
Naturally occurring clay from Kisameet Bay, B.C. — long used by the Heiltsuk First Nation for its healing potential — exhibits potent antibacterial activity against multidrug-resistant pathogens, according to new research from the University of British Columbia. The researchers recommend the rare mineral clay be studied as a clinical treatment for serious infections caused by ESKAPE strains of bacteria...
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How Congress Ignored Science and Fueled Antibiotic Resistance
The study was being conducted by Dr. Stuart B. Levy, a researcher in Boston. Levy was 36 in 1974. He was the son of a family doctor from Delaware and had grown up accompanying his father on house calls and discussing cases afterward. He was a faculty member at Tufts University School of Medicine, in a part of Boston that is gentrified now but was cheap and seedy then, and he had taken a circuitous route to get there, studying first literature, then medicine, and then microbiology in Italy and France...
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Investigation Finds Online Pharmacies 'Freely' Prescribing Antibiotics
An investigation has been launched after online pharmacies were accused of over prescribing antibiotics to undercover reporters. The General Medical Council (GMC) launched the probe based on evidence collected by BBC Radio 5 live, and said that "the overprescribing of antibiotics risks the health of us all". The investigation looked at 17 UK-based pharmacies selling antibiotics online and in one case a reporter posing as a patient was issued with three prescriptions in the space of just 24 hours...
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New Alliance to Drive and Measure Industry Progress to Curb Antimicrobial Resistance
Speaking at the B20 Health Conference in Berlin, IFPMA Director-General Thomas Cueni announced the launch of the AMR Industry Alliance, which will help give impetus to the life-sciences industry efforts to curb antimicrobial resistance. The threat of antimicrobial resistance causing drug-resistant infections is now more urgent than ever. It is estimated that, unless action is taken, the burden of deaths from antimicrobial resistance could be as high as 10 million lives each year by 2050 – more than cancer...
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New Arms Race: Science Versus Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs
The death rate from bacterial infections plummeted following the discovery of penicillin. However, these microbes developed ways to resist our antibiotics. What threats do superbugs pose and what factors contribute to their emergence? The discovery and development of antibiotics saved millions of lives during the latter half of the 20th century. Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming, who witnessed soldiers with infected wounds perish while serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War, per chance discovered a penicillin producing mold in 1928...
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New Device Detects Bacteria and Tests for Antibiotic Resistance
An interdisciplinary team of engineering and pharmaceutical researchers at the University of Alberta has invented a device that can rapidly identify harmful bacteria and can determine whether it is resistant to antibiotics. The device could save precious hours in patient care and public health, and prevent the spread of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. The team's findings are published in a paper entitled Microfluidic cantilever detects bacteria and measures their susceptibility to antibiotics in small confined volumes in the current issue of Nature Communications...
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New Light-Activated Nanoparticles Kill Over 90% of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing problem around the world, responsible for some 2 million infections in the US each year that lead to approximately 23,000 deaths. But a new nanoparticle treatment developed by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder could provide an effective means of fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria including Salmonella, E. Coli, and Staphylococcus, based on results in a laboratory environment. In testing with a lab-grown culture, the nanoparticles killed 92 percent of drug-resistant bacterial cells while leaving the other cells intact...
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No One Knows How Many Patients Are Dying from Superbug Infections in California Hospitals
Many thousands of Californians are dying every year from infections they caught while in hospitals. But you’d never know that from their death certificates. Sharley McMullen of Manhattan Beach came down with a fever just hours after being wheeled out of a Torrance Memorial Medical Center operating room on May 4, 2014. A missionary’s daughter who worked as a secretary at Cape Canaveral, Fla., at the height of the space race, McMullen, 72, was there for treatment of a bleeding stomach ulcer. Soon, though, she was fighting for her life...
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Peer into the Post-Apocalyptic Future of Antimicrobial Resistance
Aout 4 million years ago, a cave was forming in the Delaware Basin of what is now Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. From that time on, Lechuguilla Cave remained untouched by humans or animals until its discovery in 1986—an isolated, pristine primeval ecosystem. When the bacteria found on the walls of Lechuguilla were analyzed, many of the microbes were determined not only to have resistance to natural antibiotics like penicillin, but also to synthetic antibiotics that did not exist on earth until the second half of the twentieth century...
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Peer into the Post-Apocalyptic Future of Antimicrobial Resistance
Aout 4 million years ago, a cave was forming in the Delaware Basin of what is now Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. From that time on, Lechuguilla Cave remained untouched by humans or animals until its discovery in 1986—an isolated, pristine primeval ecosystem. When the bacteria found on the walls of Lechuguilla were analyzed, many of the microbes were determined not only to have resistance to natural antibiotics like penicillin, but also to synthetic antibiotics that did not exist on earth until the second half of the twentieth century...
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PolyU Discovers a Newly Emerged Superbug -- Hyper-Resistant and Hypervirulent Klebsiella Pneumoniae
The Partner State Key Laboratory of Chirosciences at the Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology (ABCT) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) discovered a newly emerged superbug, hyper-resistant and hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae, which may cause untreatable and fatal infections in relatively healthy individuals and will pose enormous threat to human health...
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Ready or Not: New Report on Protecting the Public's Health
The Trust for America's Health (TFAH) released its 2019 edition of what it hopes will be an annual report, Ready or Not: Protecting the Public's Health from Diseases, Disasters and Bioterrorism last February. The ground-breaking report warns about key global challenges ahead, like the risk of a flu pandemic; the impact of weather pattern changes due to climate change; the dangers of antimicrobial resistance, and others, and tries to offer advice on how to prepare for them.
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Science, Society And Risk In The Anthropocene
The culture of too much hygiene in rapid, unplanned urbanising society with poor infrastructure exposes urban spaces to a particular risk brought about by unchecked use of technology. This article looks at the indiscriminate use of antibiotics and antibacterial consumer products, which form the aetiology for the emergence of new strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria (superbugs) in urban space, especially in waterbodies...
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Simple Ways to Deter Improper Antibiotic Prescribing
Inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics is a long-standing practice that once seemed benign but whose consequences are coming into sharper focus. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria kill at least 23,000 Americans annually and cause more than 2 million illnesses in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). There are some good ideas that can help physicians steer their patients away from antibiotics when they will do more harm than good...
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