Free Republic

The Jerusalem latrine was found in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, close to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1996 during excavations of a cesspool in the courtyard of a Spanish school. A microscopic fish tapeworm egg found in the medieval latrine at Riga. (photo credit: IVY YEH) From the bowels of history comes a study published this week in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B at Cambridge University in England, which details a first attempt at using the methods of ancient bacterial detection, pioneered in studies of past epidemics, to characterize the microbial...

CHICAGO (Reuters Health) - A group of drug-resistant microbes that infect the intestine have become much more common among hospitalized patients and in the general community over the last decade, a Spanish team of researchers report. The bacteria are called extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Enterobacteriaceae. The findings are concerning because these microbes are resistant to drugs called cephalosporins, and most can evade other types of antibiotics too. Dr. Rafael Canton of Hospital Ramon y Cajal in Madrid presented his team's findings here at the 43rd annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. The researchers compared more than 1200 stool samples...