More Kosher Use of Antibiotics

Mar 5, 2009
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Time to review the use of antibiotics and how the government should better protect us. Some things in America are just so ludicrous and harmful that it makes you wonder how low our culture and political system can go. Antibiotics can save lives. They should fight disease and infection to save lives. But this is a case of too much of a good thing is not wonderful. For years some in the medical community have tried to spread the message that indiscriminate use of antibiotics has been making some bacteria drug resistant and fatal superbugs. But over use of antibiotics for relatively minor ailments and problems caused by viruses in humans is nothing compared to even wider use of them in farm animals.

Read the rest of my article at:

More Kosher Use of Antibiotics by Joel Hirschhorn
 
Granny makin' sure possum an' Uncle Ferd got B3 in their daily vitamins...
:cool:
Vitamin B3 'helps kill superbugs'
27 August 2012 - Superbug antibiotic resistance is increasing
Vitamin B3 could be the new weapon in the fight against superbugs such as MRSA, researchers have suggested. US experts found B3, also known as nicotinamide, boosts the ability of immune cells to kill Staphylococcus bacteria. B3 increases the numbers and efficacy of neutrophils, white blood cells that can kill and eat harmful bugs. The study, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could lead to a "major change in treatment", a UK expert said. B3 was tested on Staphylococcal infections, such as the potentially fatal MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Such infections are found in hospitals and nursing homes, but are also on the rise in prisons, the military and among athletes.

'Turn on'

The scientists used extremely high doses of B3 - far higher than that obtained from dietary sources - in their tests, carried out both on animals and on human blood. And the researchers say there is as yet no evidence that dietary B3 or supplements could prevent or treat bacterial infections. The researchers say B3 appears to be able to "turn on" certain antimicrobial genes, boosting the immune cells' killing power.

Prof Adrian Gombart, of Oregon State University's Linus Pauling Institute, who worked on the research, said: "This is potentially very significant, although we still need to do human studies. "Antibiotics are wonder drugs, but they face increasing problems with resistance by various types of bacteria, especially Staphylococcus aureus. "This could give us a new way to treat Staph infections that can be deadly, and might be used in combination with current antibiotics. "It's a way to tap into the power of the innate immune system and stimulate it to provide a more powerful and natural immune response."

Prof Mark Enright, of the University of Bath, said: "Neutrophils are really the front line against infections in the blood and the use of nicotinamide seems safe at this dose to use in patients as it is already licensed for use. "This could cause a major change in treatment for infections alongside conventional antibiotics to help bolster patients immune system. "I would like to see in patient clinical trials but cannot see why this couldn't be used straight away in infected patients."

BBC News - Vitamin B3 'helps kill superbugs'
 
Granny says take vitamins dat's got B3 in `em...
:cool:
Studies: Vitamin B3 Boosts Immune System to Kill Superbugs
September 06, 2012 - New research suggests megadoses of vitamin B3 may be able to help our bodies fight some of the world’s deadliest bacteria or “superbugs.”
When given in doses far higher than found in any normal diet, scientists say the common nutritional supplement, vitamin B3, boosts the immune system by as much as 1,000 fold, and can kill a life-threatening infection called methicillin-resistant Staphyloccocus aureus, or MRSA. U.S. public health officials report that more Americans now die from MRSA each year than from AIDS. In 2005, more than 18,000 deaths were attributed to MRSA. About 16,000 people in the United States died from AIDS that year. George Liu, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, led a team investigating B3’s potential to kill the superbug in both mice and samples of human blood.

The researchers found very high doses of B3 stimulate a gene involved in the production of specialized immune cells called neutrophils. These cells destroy and sweep away harmful bacteria, boosting the immune system response to Staph and MRSA by anywhere from 100 percent to 1,000 percent. Liu explained that megadoses of B3, known scientifically as nicotinamide, do not kill the pathogens directly. “What it does is it hits the white cells in our body and makes them much more potent so they can come about and kill some of the Staph aureus and MRSA,” he said. Liu said researchers discovered vitamin B3’s potential to fight superbugs by studying a group of people with a mutated copy of the neutrophils gene, who suffered from severe, chronic infections.

Liu cautions people not to try to boost their immune systems with the inexpensive, easily available dietary supplement. “Because we don’t know a lot of information about what’s the dose and if we take too high of a level what could be the potential side effects, we must caution that this has to be done very carefully. And we would not suggest anybody to go into the vitamin store to purchase B3 to help their own immune system,” Liu said. At this point there is no evidence that megadoses of nicotinamide cause significant side effects, but Liu said that still needs to be determined, along with the correct dose to fight drug-resistant Staph infections like MRSA. An article by Liu and colleagues on vitamin B3’s potential to fight superbugs is published in the September issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Source
 
At the NIH???!!!...
:confused:
Superbug kills 7th person at Md. NIH hospital
15 Spet.`12 — A deadly germ untreatable by most antibiotics has killed a seventh person at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Maryland.
The Washington Post (NIH superbug claims 7th victim - The Washington Post) reported the death Friday. NIH officials told the paper that the boy from Minnesota died Sept. 7. NIH says the boy arrived at the research hospital in Bethesda in April and was being treated for complications from a bone marrow transplant when he contracted the bug.

He was the 19th patient at the hospital to contract an antibiotic-resistant strain of KPC, or Klebsiella pneumoniae. The outbreak stemmed from a single patient carrying the superbug who arrived at the hospital last summer.

The paper reported the Minnesota boy's case marked the first new infection of this superbug at NIH since January.

Superbug kills 7th person at Md. NIH hospital - Yahoo! News

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NIH superbug claims 7th victim
September 14,`12 - A deadly, drug-resistant superbug outbreak that began last summer at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center claimed its seventh victim Sept. 7, when a seriously ill boy from Minnesota succumbed to a bloodstream infection, officials said Friday.
The boy was the 19th patient at the research hospital to contract an antibiotic-resistant strain of the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae that arrived in August 2011 with a New York woman who needed a lung transplant. But his case marked the first new infection of this superbug at NIH since January — a worrisome signal that the bug persists inside the huge brick-and-glass federal facility in Bethesda. “It’s heartbreaking,” said John Gallin, the physician-researcher who directs the clinical center. “What happened this summer was a very unfortunate case. All of these cases are hugely sad cases.”

The boy arrived in Bethesda in April after complications arose from a bone marrow transplant he received last year. His underlying condition — a severe genetic defect that crippled his immune system — increased his risk of acquiring the superbug, as did the steroids and other drugs the boy was given to combat complications from the transplant. “We worried he was set up for a bad infection,” said Gallin. On July 25, routine rectal swabs of patients for hospital-borne infections — a measure put in place during the worst of the outbreak last fall — detected the superbug in the boy.

Genetic analysis showed the boy’s strain matched that of the superbug that arrived last year. It eventually spread to 17 additional patients, of whom 11 died. Six of those deaths were directly attributed to the superbug by NIH staff. The NIH did not make the outbreak public until describing it in a scientific publication last month. As the superbug spread last fall, NIH staff members built a wall to isolate infected patients, ripped out plumbing that harbored the bacteria, hired monitors to ensure doctors and nurses were properly scrubbing their hands and even blasted patients’ rooms with vaporized disinfectant.

By January, those measures had apparently halted the spread. For six months, no new patients became infected. But in July, the boy tested positive for the superbug. Clinic staffers isolated him in the intensive-care unit and raced to treat the infection. The boy’s superbug originally appeared vulnerable to one antibiotic, but after a week of therapy, the infection grew impervious to that drug, too, Gallin said. The NIH obtained an experimental antibiotic, but it also failed. “This kid probably got this infection because a patient who was a carrier [of the superbug] was on the same unit,” said Gallin. “There was undoubtedly some intrahospital transmission despite our best efforts.”

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A bit of old Russian folk wisdom could produce a crop of new antibiotics...
:cool:
Frogs Could Provide Big Leap in Antibiotics
January 02, 2013 - Scientists have discovered that different species of frogs produce potent cocktails of antibiotics.
With drug resistant bacteria a growing public health threat worldwide, a type of frog Russians have used to keep milk fresh could provide a fresh source of germ fighters. Moscow State University chemist Albert Lebedev grew up in a rural part of Russia, where many people kept their own cows. In the days before refrigeration, it was a challenge to keep milk from spoiling. So people enlisted the help of the local amphibians. “[For] small portions of milk to drink, they used to put [a] frog inside," he says. "A small frog over there could prevent the milk from being spoiled.” It turns out that putting a frog in your milk is not as crazy as it might sound.

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Frog surgery

To explain, let’s go back about 25 years, to another surprising discovery about amphibians. The eggs of African horned frogs are a popular tool for scientists studying the innermost workings of cells. In the late 1980s, Michael Zasloff was surgically removing frog ovaries for his research at the National Institutes of Health. Zasloff noticed that when he put the frogs back in their slimy aquarium homes, without the benefit of antibiotics, “The frogs healed after surgery without exhibiting any signs of infection or inflammation.” Zasloff and his colleagues discovered that’s because the skin of the African horned frog produces unique anti-microbial compounds.

Potent cocktails

Then they discovered that other species of frog also produce potent cocktails of antibiotics. “What is amazing is that no two frogs have the same cocktail," he says. "They’re all different, and all beautifully tuned to deal with the microbes that these animals face.” And for frogs, dealing with microbes on their skin is a matter of life and death. They breathe and drink through their skin, and spend much of their time in waters teeming with microbes. Moscow State University’s Albert Lebedev says the more scientists looked, the more kinds of chemicals they found coming out of the skins of amphibians. “They can be antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial, antitumor, neuropeptides, analgesics," and so on," he says. "So, a lot of various functions.”

Milk preservatives
 
Vaporizin' dem superbugs...
:clap2:
Robotic Vaporizers Reduce Hospital-Borne Infections
January 03, 2013 - It's a growing problem for hospitals around the world: strains of deadly, drug-resistant bacteria contaminating operating and recovery rooms. To combat this serious threat to patient health, two dozen U.S. hospitals are now using robotic, hydrogen-peroxide vaporizers to sanitize rooms where infected patients have stayed. A new study finds that use of the vaporizers' germ-killing mist has significantly lowered the number of hospital-borne infections.
Hospitals can be a haven for many types of dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. The microbes can survive on hard surfaces long after an infected patient has been discharged. Traditional hand-cleaning and mopping of individual rooms between patients, using simple anti-bacterial cleansers, often leave some microbes behind, according to Trish Perl, a professor of medicine at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “There are very complicated surfaces with equipment and little nooks and crannies that are hard to clean. They (the cleaning staff) are given a short period of time to clean rooms and they simply can’t physically get everything clean before the room turns over,” Perl said.

So, researchers led by Perl conducted the first comprehensive study to see if they could reduce the risk of transmitting antibiotic-resistant organisms. They compared traditional disinfecting methods to standard cleaning, adding the disinfecting robots. Perl says the mobile vaporizers resemble R2D2 -- the little dome-topped robot in the Star War movies -- with a spray nozzle on top. “And it spins around the room. So it turns its head 360 degrees,” Perl said.

The nozzle emits a fine mist of hydrogen peroxide, a powerful antibacterial bleaching agent. Because the bleach can be toxic to humans if ingested or inhaled, a second vaporizing robot is wheeled into a room to spray a solution that breaks down the hydrogen peroxide into harmless water and oxygen molecules, according to Perl. "It doesn't destroy hospital surfaces, including equipment surfaces - things like computers and all this technological stuff you find in buildings," Perl said. Hopkins researchers closely monitored some 6,300 patients who stayed in 180 private rooms over a 2 1/2 year period. Half of the rooms were disinfected only by hand, while the other half were also treated with the robotic vaporizers. In the end, 21 percent of the rooms harbored drug-resistant organisms, most of them not sanitized by the robots, while the hydrogen peroxide-vaporizing machines reduced by 64 percent the number of patients who later contracted a hospital-borne infection. They also lowered the risk of infection with drug-resistant enterococci by 80 percent.

The twin robots are expensive. Together, they cost about $40,000. Perl says she hopes that Bioquell, the U.S. manufacturer, can bring down that price eventually so the devices will be more affordable to hospitals in developing countries. The sanitizing machines were first used in several Singapore hospitals in 2002 during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. An article on the effectiveness of vapor-dispensing robots in controlling hospital infections is published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Source
 
La Cucaracha!...
:eusa_eh:
Cockroaches Could Lead to New Antibiotics
January 08, 2013 : Most people might see cockroaches as good-for-nothing pests, but this germ-ridden insect could be an indirect source of new antibiotics for humans.
Cockroaches host the larvae of a parasitic type of wasp, which spend their formative days eating the bacteria-laden body of the cockroach from the inside out. Researchers have discovered the wasp larva secretes chemicals that sanitize the decidedly unsanitary guts of the cockroach. These germ-killing chemicals could eventually be developed for human uses.

Cockroach cradle

For the developing larvae, “the cockroach is the only food source and the cradle,” says biologist Gudrun Herzner at the University of Regensburg in Germany. It’s a cradle that needs a good cleaning, because cockroaches spend time in some very unsanitary places, from trash heaps to public toilets, where you’ll find a cornucopia of bacteria, fungi and viruses that can make you, and the emerald wasp larva, sick. While the young wasp’s hygiene challenges may seem extreme, Herzner says they are basically the same problems we all face. “The larva has to protect, first, its food from degradation by microbes, and then it has to protect itself from foodborne illnesses that these microbes might cause.”

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The female emerald cockroach wasp leads her prey by the antenna after stinging it to render it docile. The egg she lays on the roach will hatch, burrow inside, and feed on the roach as the wasp larva develops.

Sanitizer dispenser

As the wasp larva munches its way through the microbe-laden body of the cockroach, it produces generous amounts of a clear liquid. Herzner and her colleagues found this liquid to contain a blend of antimicrobial substances, according to their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The larvae seem to disperse this secretion thoroughly inside the cockroach, and in this way sanitize their cockroach hosts,” Herzner says. One of the chemicals fights the germs that cause tuberculosis; another has a broad range of activity against bacteria, fungi, and viruses such as hepatitis C. Herzner says it is the first time researchers have found insects using this chemical against microbes.

Insect drugs

But it’s probably not the last insect antimicrobial discovery. Most antibiotics that doctors use have been discovered among microbes living in the soil, but if researchers turn to the insect world, microbiologist Julian Davies, at the University of British Columbia, says, “You can have a potentially new source of antibiotics. People have been looking at this. Nothing’s come out of it yet, but they’re certainly looking at it.”

Antimicrobials have been discovered everywhere from frog skin to panda blood, but none of them have made it to the medicine cabinet yet. Davies says it can be hard to isolate useful quantities of the active chemicals in these sources, and they may be difficult chemicals to produce in the lab. Plus, Davies says, “It’s fine to find an antibiotic, but half of them are toxic.” Scientists are working to overcome these hurdles.

Bacteria talking?
 
Antibiotic-Resistant Diseases Pose Apocalyptic Threat...
:eek:
Antibiotic-resistant diseases pose ‘apocalyptic’ threat, top expert says
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - Britain’s most senior medical adviser has warned MPs that the rise in drug-resistant diseases could trigger a national emergency comparable to a catastrophic terrorist attack, pandemic flu or major coastal flooding.
Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the threat from infections that are resistant to frontline antibiotics was so serious that the issue should be added to the government’s national risk register of civil emergencies. She described what she called an “apocalyptic scenario” where people going for simple operations in 20 years’ time die of routine infections “because we have run out of antibiotics”. The register was established in 2008 to advise the public and businesses on national emergencies that Britain could face in the next five years.

The highest priority risks on the latest register include a deadly flu outbreak, catastrophic terrorist attacks, and major flooding on the scale of 1953, the last occasion on which a national emergency was declared in the UK. Speaking to MPs on the Commons science and technology committee, Davies said she would ask the Cabinet Office to add antibiotic resistance to the national risk register in the light of an annual report on infectious disease she will publish in March. Davies declined to elaborate on the report, but said its publication would coincide with a government strategy to promote more responsible use of antibiotics among doctors and the clinical professions. “We need to get our act together in this country,” she told the committee.

The issue of drug resistance is as old as antibiotics themselves, and arises when drugs knock out susceptible infections, leaving hardier, resilient strains behind. The survivors then multiply, and over time can become unstoppable with frontline medicines. Some of the best known are so-called hospital superbugs such as MRSA that are at the root of outbreaks among patients. “In the past, most people haven’t worried because we’ve always had new antibiotics to turn to,” said Alan Johnson, consultant clinical scientist at the Health Protection Agency. “What has changed is that the development pipeline is running dry. We don’t have new antibiotics that we can rely on in the immediate future or in the longer term.”

Changes in modern medicine have exacerbated the problem by making patients more susceptible to infections. For example, cancer treatments weaken the immune system, and the use of catheters increases the chances of bugs entering the bloodstream. “We are becoming increasingly reliant on antibiotics in a whole range of areas of medicine. If we don’t have new antibiotics to deal with the problems of resistance we see, we are going to be in serious trouble,” Johnson added.

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Searching high & low for new sources of antibiotics...
:clap2:
Antibiotics search to focus on sea bed
14 February 2013 - Scientists will test unique chemical compounds from marine samples found in deep sea trenches
Researchers are embarking on an £8m project to discover new antibiotics at the bottom of the ocean. A team, led by scientists at Aberdeen University, is hunting for undiscovered chemicals among life that has evolved in deep sea trenches. Prof Marcel Jaspars said the team hoped to find "the next generation" of infection-fighting drugs.

England's chief medical officer has warned of an "antibiotic apocalypse" with too few new drugs in the pipeline. Few samples have ever been collected from ocean trenches - deep, narrow valleys in the sea floor which can plunge down to almost 6.8 miles (11km). Yet researchers believe there is great potential for discovering antibiotics in these extreme conditions.

Life in these incredibly hostile environments is effectively cut off and has evolved differently in each trench. The international team will use fishing vessels to drop sampling equipment on a reel of cables to the trench bed to collect sediment. Scientists will then attempt to grow unique bacteria and fungi from the sediment that can be extracted and refined to discover new antibiotics.

Starting in the autumn with the Atacama Trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean - about 100 miles (161km) off the coast of Chile and Peru - the EU-funded research will also search deep trenches off New Zealand as well waters off Antarctica. Arctic waters off Norway will also be explored.

'Pre-antibiotic era'

See also:

The bug-hunters discovering new species in their spare time
14 February 2013 - Everyone knows there are lots of species yet to be discovered in rainforests and remote parts of the world. But hundreds are being discovered every year in Europe too - most of them by amateurs.
"If you want to find something new, you have to go to a place nobody has been before," says Jean-Michel Lemaire. "You have to open your eyes." Lemaire is a retired mathematician from south-east France with a passion for beetles. In the last few years, Lemaire has found seven new species. He has hunted them down by exploring caves and crawling through tunnels dating back to the Middle Ages. It was in one such tunnel in Monaco that he found his most prized discovery - a tiny, blind soil-dwelling beetle.

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The Monaco beetle is only 2mm long

Lemaire thinks it probably lives nowhere else on earth but the Rock of Monaco. "Finding a new species is like the holy grail," he says. Already about 350,000 beetle species have been identified, making it one of the biggest animal orders on the planet. It is hard work crawling around underground, but, Lemaire points out, beetles are at least easier to catch than some other creatures - butterflies, for example. For centuries, scientists have catalogued the creatures of Europe - the tall and the small, the feathered and the furred. After all, Europe was home to some of the most revered naturalists of all time, including Britain's Charles Darwin and Sweden's Carl Linnaeus, the biologist who popularised the Latin naming system for every species on Earth.

And yet "we only know the tip of the iceberg," says ecologist Benoit Fontaine of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. "There are more species that we don't know than species that we know." In Europe alone, about 700 new species are being discovered each year, says Fontaine. That's about four times the rate of two centuries ago. These species tend to be tiny creatures - often insects, spiders, and worms. And many of the animals would likely have remained undiscovered if not for a dedicated band of naturalists who have set out to find new creatures.

New species recently discovered in Europe
 
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New CDC advisory on antibiotics...
:cool:
CDC, doctors group issue advice for not taking antibiotics
Jan. 19, 2016 - Most respiratory tract infections are not affected by antibiotics, leading experts to suggest patients are counseled on easing symptoms as illnesses run their course.
Acute respiratory tract infections bring adults to the doctor's office the most often, and antibiotics are the most common treatment. A physician's group and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contend, however, that antibiotics are generally not necessary for the infections. The American College of Physicians and CDC issued a set of recommendations for the treatment of ARTIs -- which include acute uncomplicated bronchitis, pharyngitis, rhinosinusitis, and the common cold -- moving away from antibiotics because they do not treat the conditions. Previous research has shown about half of all antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessary, and many antibiotics are losing their efficacy because of unnecessary use.

While many patients expect antibiotics, including for the common cold, physicians are recommended to help patients treat symptoms and educate them on the lack of effect the drugs have on ARTIs and similar infections. "Inappropriate use of antibiotics for ARTIs is an important factor contributing to the spread of antibiotic-resistant infections, which is a public health threat," Dr. Wayne J. Riley, president of the ACP, said in a press release. "Reducing overuse of antibiotics for ARTIs in adults is a clinical priority and a High Value Care way to improve quality of care, lower health care costs, and slow and/or prevent the continued rise in antibiotic resistance."

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Experts at the CDC and American College of Physicians recommend skipping antibiotics for a number of acute respiratory tract infections they don't really treat.​

The new guidelines on antibiotic use, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, set out four health situations that, based on a review of previous studies and medical data, either do not require antibiotic use or recommend their use with specific infections. For the common cold, doctors are recommended not to prescribe antibiotics and focus on treating symptoms, with additional treatments considered if symptoms continue for more than two weeks or get worse, although antibiotics still would not help. Patients with uncomplicated bronchitis should not receive antibiotics unless they have pneumonia, and the experts suggest testing should not be done either unless the patient is thought to have pneumonia. Symptoms should be treated with cough suppressants, expectorants, antihistamines and decongestants.

Patients with sore throats also should not receive antibiotics because they do not improve symptoms, and a similar recommendation was made for patients with uncomplicated sinus infections, which generally improve with supportive care. In nearly all cases, the guidelines significantly suggest counseling patients on the lack of an effect antibiotics have on these illnesses and that other treatments can be more effective at easing symptoms. "Although it is everyone's responsibility to use antibiotics appropriately, providers have the power to control prescriptions," researchers wrote in the guidelines. "Reducing inappropriate antibiotic prescribing will improve quality of care, decrease health care costs, and preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics."

CDC, doctors group issue advice for not taking antibiotics - UPI.com

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Medical device maker recalls scopes linked to superbug outbreak
Jan. 16, 2016 - Olympus knew about the link between CRE and the device as early as 2012, but failed to warn the public or take action.
Medical device manufacturer and camera maker Olympus announced Friday it will voluntarily recall thousands of surgical scopes linked to deadly infections. The FDA has approved the company's plans to redesign the scopes, a plan that aims to fix flaws that may have encouraged the spread of the superbug called CRE, or carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae. The devices, called duodenoscopes, are used to help drain fluids from blocked pancreatic and biliary ducts. They've been used in thousands of procedures, usually helping patient avoid more invasive surgeries.

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Medical illustration of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae.​

A recent U.S. Senate investigation linked the devices to at least 25 outbreaks of CRE, infecting more than 140 patients in nine United States cities. Three patients at UCLA died as a result of the antibiotic-resistant infection. The Senate investigation determined that Olympus knew about the link between CRE and the device as early as 2012, but failed to warn the public or take action. "It infuriates me to know they knew about this in 2012," Steven Wilkinson-St. George, one of the affected patients, told the Los Angeles Times. "This should have been done years ago."

Olympus makes 85 percent of duodenoscopes. The remaining are manufactured by Pentax and Fuji. There's no work on whether the companies will volunteer or be made to recall and repair the devices as well. Despite the recall, Olympus has denied culpability, claiming their scopes are safe to use if cleaning instructions are meticulously followed. "Although we do not agree with all of the report's conclusions, we are closely reviewing the recommendations in the report as part of Olympus' ongoing efforts to increase patient safety associated with use of Olympus duodenoscopes," the company said in a statement.

Duodenoscopes linked to superbug infection recalled by maker - UPI.com
 
New blood test for Prescribing Antibiotics...

Blood Test to Help Doctors Make Right Call on Prescribing Antibiotics
January 21, 2016 - Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem worldwide. One of the biggest culprits is treatment for routine colds. Experts say doctors often send their patients home with prescriptions for antibiotics because they can not determine the source of the illnesses.
Researchers concerned about the overuse of antibiotics have developed a blood test to help physicians determine whether patients' colds are the result of bacterial or viral infections. Ephraim Tsalik, a professor of medicine at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and an emergency room physician, said viral infections do not respond to antibiotics, and if such drugs are prescribed unnecessarily, there is the risk of creating resistance to antibiotics in the patient over time. “When you magnify that against millions of people who are getting antibiotics unnecessarily, what might have been a small risk becomes a very real one across the population,” Tsalik said.

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A microbiologist reads a panel to check on a bacterium's resistance to an antibiotic in the Infectious Disease Laboratory at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.​

The study by Tsalik and his colleagues, described in the journal Science Translational Medicine, involved 31 people, 10 with bacterial pneumonia and 21 with a flu virus. From these, investigators developed the profiles of about 20,000 genes. The gene activity is different, depending upon whether someone is infected with a bacterium or a virus. Then, the researchers tested the blood samples of 300 sick patients. The microbes included rhinoviruses and strep infections.

Tsalik and his team compared the results to the gene profiles of people who were not sick, "and we found we got an accuracy of 87 percent" in distinguishing noninfectious from infectious illness and bacterial from viral causes, "which we very excited to see, considering there is really very little out there and just about any ability to discriminate between these different groups is an improvement over the current state.” Currently, it takes one day for the gene expression test to yield a result. Tsalik said researchers are trying to whittle the processing time down to an hour or less.

Blood Test to Help Doctors Make Right Call on Prescribing Antibiotics
 
How do we avoid antibiotic resistance apocalypse...
confused.gif

How do we avoid the antibiotics apocalypse?
Fri, 04 Nov 2016 - Given the complexity of antibiotics resistance, what should we do to tackle the problem?
Every year, at least 700,000 people die from drug-resistant infections. It is why government scientists have described antibiotic resistance as one of the greatest global threats of the 21st Century. So what are people doing to try to avert the so-called antibiotics apocalypse? Well, it turns out, quite a lot. First, there are those who are trying to get us to take fewer antibiotics. That is because the more antibiotics we all take, the more resistant bacteria become. Jason Doctor, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, has been carrying out experiments to see whether it is possible to get doctors to prescribe fewer pills. He persuaded more than 200 doctors to sign a letter to their patients, making a commitment to prescribe antibiotics more judiciously. They blew it up into the size of a poster and put it on the walls of their health clinics.

Then they experimented with a ranking system, sending doctors a monthly email telling them how many antibiotics they were prescribing inappropriately compared to their peers. They set up alerts on doctors' computers, prompting them to question whether they really needed to prescribe antibiotics and they also found ways that doctors could appease persistent patients who demanded the medication. When they tried all these different approaches together, it dramatically reduced the number of antibiotic prescriptions issued. Some of these changes are now being implemented across the US and in other countries, but even if people were only given antibiotics when they really needed them, that would not solve the problem. Because while humans are a big market for antibiotics, there is an even bigger one.

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Bacteria​

In 1950, a chance discovery in a laboratory showed that antibiotics make animals grow faster. Since then, farmers all over the world have pumped them into their animals, even after scientific studies proved that bacterial resistance could pass from animals to humans. But one country has shown that farmers who were once dependent on antibiotics can wean themselves and their animals off them. The Netherlands has more animals per square metre than any other country on the planet and for years, those animals were routinely fed antibiotics. A ban on giving growth-promoting antibiotics to their animals had little effect as farmers used the same amount and just labelled them differently.

But after a series of health scares, the government decided to crack down. In 2009, farmers were told they had to reduce the amount of antibiotics they were giving their animals by 20% in two years and 50% in five. Dik Mevius is an infectious disease specialist and vet who helped farmers draw up a plan to meet those targets. They set up a database, revealing which farmers were the worst offenders, and stopped farmers from shopping round for antibiotics from different vets. Any vets or farmers who prescribed or used antibiotics unnecessarily were fined or lost their accreditation. And, surprisingly, Dutch farmers got on board. They stopped using so many antibiotics, which, for many of them, meant they had to change the way they reared their animals. "It really was a revolution," says Mr Mevius. "We reduced the amount of antibiotics used by 60% in just a couple of years."

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