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Ancient antimicrobial treatment could help to solve modern bacterial resistance. Like werewolves and vampires, bacteria have a weakness: silver. The precious metal has been used to fight infection for thousands of years — Hippocrates first described its antimicrobial properties in 400 bc — but how it works has been a mystery. Now, a team led by James Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University in Massachusetts, has described how silver can disrupt bacteria, and shown that the ancient treatment could help to deal with the thoroughly modern scourge of antibiotic resistance. The work is published today in Science Translational Medicine1....

The radical findings follow years of debate about the cause of such discomfort and the best way to treat it. One leading neurosurgeon said the finding was a “turning point” so important that the researchers behind it deserved a Nobel prize. But infection experts cautioned against widespread long-term prescribing of antibiotics, which could increase drug resistance across the population, triggering a rise in superbugs. Around five million people in Britain will suffer chronic back pain at some point in their lives, and the cause is often not clear.

· Amoxicillin 250mg AND 500mg (FISH-MOX, FISH-MOX FORTE) · Ciprofloxacin 250mg and 500mg(FISH-FLOX, FISH-FLOX FORTE) · Cephalexin 250mg and 500mg (FISH-FLEX, FISH-FLEX FORTE) · Metronidazole 250mg (FISH-ZOLE) · Doxycycline 100mg (BIRD-BIOTIC) · Ampicillin 250mg and 500mg (FISH-CILLIN, FISH-CILLIN FORTE) Clindamycin 300mg (FISH-CIN) · Sulfamethoxazole 400mg/Trimethoprin 80mg (BIRD-SULFA)

Scientists are reporting "laboratory resurrections" of several 2-3-billion-year-old proteins that are ancient ancestors of the enzymes that enable today's antibiotic-resistant bacteria to shrug off huge doses of penicillins, cephalosporins and other modern drugs. The achievement, reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, opens the door to a scientific "replay" of the evolution of antibiotic resistance with an eye to finding new ways to cope with the problem. Jose M. Sanchez-Ruiz, Eric A. Gaucher, Valeria A. Risso and colleagues explain that antibiotic resistance existed long before Alexander Fleming discovered the first antibiotic in 1928. Genes that contain instructions for...

If you’re an editor in need of a medical headline to fill out some column space, I can recommend ‘New antibiotics needed, experts warn’. Don’t worry if you don’t have all the details: experts are always warning about that, and unfortunately, they’re always right. That headline’s been valid for years now, and it looks like it will be good for quite a few more.Now, why should that be? Here’s a large market, with a substantial unmet need that’s doing nothing but growing over time. Why aren’t the pharma research labs stepping up to fill it? You can get several answers...

Some researchers propose that all antibiotics kill cells using reactive oxygen species, whereas others favour individual paths © ShutterstockThe esoteric yet deadly serious world of antibiotic chemistry looks set for something of a showdown. Two new pieces of research appear to flatly contradict a new school of thought about how antibiotics kill bacteria, which has been gaining traction in recent years. The topic is important because a detailed understanding of the mechanism of action of antibiotics is key to the development of new and more efficient antibiotics in the face of mounting resistance to antibiotics by pathogenic microbes.In 2007, a...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is alerting clinicians of an emerging untreatable multidrug-resistant organism in the United States. There are many forms of Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), but of the 37 forms reported in the U.S., 15 have been reported in less than a year. The CDC said the increase in CRE means health care providers need to “act aggressively to prevent the emergence and spread of these unusual CRE organisms.” Enterobacteriaceae lives in water, soil and the human gut. These “surperbugs” have developed high levels of resistance to antibiotics – even carbapanems. Individuals who usually develop CRE infections...

Scientists has discovered how an important natural antibiotic called dermcidin, produced by our skin when we sweat, is a highly efficient tool to fight tuberculosis germs and other dangerous bugs. Their results could contribute to the development of new antibiotics that control multi-resistant bacteria. Scientists from the University of Edinburgh and from Goettingen, Tuebingen and Strasbourg have uncovered the atomic structure of the compound, enabling them to pinpoint for the first time what makes dermcidin such an efficient weapon in the battle against dangerous bugs. Although about 1700 types of these natural antibiotics are known to exist, scientists did not...

Antibiotics are used regularly for treating bacterial infections, but there is currently no quick and simple test to determine the most effective type or dose of antibiotic for a specific patient infection. As a result, it’s estimated that around 30% of all antibiotic prescriptions are not the optimum choice. This can lead to the formation of drug-resistant bacteria, delayed recovery, and in some cases death from an infection.Tests for the most appropriate antibiotic choice are performed for life-threatening patient infections. However, microbes have to be grown on agar plates from a very small patient sample which delays results for a...

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".

A procedure that inserts fecal matter from a healthy person into the intestines of someone with diarrhea has been found to be a better treatment than antibiotics.

Panda blood compound 6x more powerful than current antibiotics In what could be either very good news or very bad news for our fluffy black and white friends, it's been discovered that panda blood contains an antibiotic compound that's vastly more powerful than anything we've got right now. Researchers at the Life Sciences College of Nanjing Agricultural University in China have extracted a compound called cathelicidin-AM from the blood of giant pandas. Cathelicidin-AM is what's called a gene-encoded antimicrobial peptide, a natural antibiotic that's produced by a panda's immune cells. Testing has shown that cathelicidin-AM can kill even drug resistant...

Kentucky Fried Chicken, which has become a staple food for young Chinese, is under investigation in Shanghai for containing high levels of antibiotics. The Shanghai Food and Drug Administration told the Oriental Daily newspaper that it has launched a formal investigation and would shortly publish its findings. …

A month or so ago, I happened to mention that I had purchased some antibiotics to stockpile for long term survival purposes. It’s not, you know, that I believe in popping antibiotics every time I get a sniffle. Nothing could be further from the truth. But a recent situation where I had a very bad tooth abscess that had to go untreated for almost a week convinced me that antibiotics for use in a collapse situation were an important part of my preps. Let me say this: I am not a health care professional nor am I especially qualified on...

Nicotinamide, commonly known as vitamin B3, may help the innate immune system kill antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria, the so-called "superbugs". In lab work done with mice and human blood, researchers found high doses of the vitamin increased the ability of immune cells to kill the bacteria by 1,000 times.The discovery opens the door to a new arsenal of tools for dealing with antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, such as those caused by methicillin-resistant S. aureus or MRSA, that have killed thousands of people around the world. They are increasing in hospitals and nursing homes, and also rising in prisons, among athletes, people in...

As a recently-retired physician who is married to a nurse-midwife, my preparedness group looks to us as the post-TEOTWAWKI hospital and medical staff. Medical progress has been exponential and even just the last decade of scientific breakthroughs can equal a century of improvement in medical treatments, surgical techniques and pharmaceuticals. However, in the years (months?) ahead, the crumbling of the infrastructure and devolution of society in general will very likely throw us back to a medical system that existed in the 19th Century. Let’s take an example: When the U.S. was a young nation, the average woman could expect to...

A company in Shanghai which collects "gutter" oil. (Photo/Xinhua) Joincare Pharmaceutical Group, which is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, has been accused of using recycled waste cooking oil as an ingredient in antibiotics, reports the Shanghai Securities News. Citing the indictment filed by prosecutors with the Ningbo Intermediate People's Court in Zhejiang province, the newspaper said Joincare was the largest user of the "gutter" oil produced by Gelin Biology Company in Jinan, Shandong province. Gutter oil refers to waste oil collected from restaurants and illegally reused. The prosecutors said Gelin sold its gutter oil to a company called...

As doctors battled a deadly, drug-resistant superbug at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center last year, they turned to an antibiotic of last resort. But colistin, is not a fancy new creation of modern biotechnology. It was discovered in a beaker of fermenting bacteria in Japan — in 1949. That doctors have resorted to such an old, dangerous drug — colistin causes kidney damage — highlights the lack of new antibiotics coming out of the pharmaceutical pipeline ... Experts point to three reasons pharmaceutical companies have pulled back from antibiotics ... There is not much money in it; inventing...

Pictures, If You Can Stand It. Health officials say they're worried that one day there will be no more antibiotics left to treat gonorrhea. There's some disturbing news out today about a disease we don't hear about much these days: gonorrhea. Federal health officials announced that the sexually transmitted infection is getting dangerously close to being untreatable. As a result, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines for how doctors should treat gonorrhea. The guidelines are designed to keep one of the remaining effective antibiotics useful for as long as possible by restricting the use of...

A sexually transmitted disease that infects millions of people each year is growing resistant to drugs and could soon become untreatable, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. The U.N. health agency is urging governments and doctors to step up surveillance of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, a bacterial infection that can cause inflammation, infertility, pregnancy complications and, in extreme cases, lead to maternal death. Babies born to mothers with gonorrhea have a 50 percent chance of developing eye infections that can result in blindness.