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Phages—tiny entities that infect bacteria—were discovered over 100 years ago but were largely abandoned as therapies. Now they’re making a comeback.Regular readers will know that the microbiome is one of my favorite topics to cover. The billions of bacteria crawling all over our bodies play a vital role in our health, influencing everything from digestion to immune health and even our moods. But there’s something else that makes a home inside us. Bacteriophages—or phages for short—are microscopic viruses even smaller than our gut microbes. These viruses infect bacteria and turn them into factories to make more of themselves. Phages were...

Potentially deadly drug-resistant “superbugs” could be lurking in nearly half of the meat products sitting in your local supermarket, a new study warns. Researchers in Spain say they discovered multidrug-resistant E. coli strains in 40 percent of chicken, turkey, beef, and pork products for sale in shops across the country. E. coli strains capable of causing severe infections in people were also “highly” prevalent, according to the results. At the same time, scientists say that antibiotic resistance is reaching “dangerously high” levels around the world. Globally, drug-resistant infections kill an estimated 700,000 people a year. That figure could rise to...

Cornelia Hertzler said doctors discovered a blood clot in her infant son ‘within a few hours after’ a transfusion of blood from a general blood bank. SPOKANE, Washington (LifeSiteNews) —A baby boy in Washington state died of a large blood clot after a hospital gave him a blood transfusion from a general stockpile instead of from an unvaccinated donor, as his parents requested. Soon after baby Alexander was born on January 3, 2022, his parents Cornelia Hertzler and Ron Bly discovered not only that his esophagus and trachea were abnormally connected, but that he had a heart condition — Double...

Honey has exceptional antimicrobial and tissue-regenerative properties which should be exploited to the full to help wounds heal, say scientists. The sweet substance, the researchers say, is offering an alternative to conventional antimicrobial drugs which are increasingly becoming ineffective in the face of growing resistance. However, more work, say the researchers, is needed to identify and quantify the compounds that give honey its antimicrobial and wound healing properties to make it more reliable and standardized. Honey has been mainly used as a topical application on wounds for its antibacterial properties, resulting from its ability to generate hydrogen peroxide and the...

Scientists have developed a “living medicine” that has the capability to kill the hospital superbug MRSA. Experiments on mice found it destroyed biofilms of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. The revolutionary treatment could make its way to patients within two years. “Our technology, based on synthetic biology and live biotherapeutics, has been designed to meet all safety and efficacy standards for application in the lung, with respiratory diseases being one of the first targets. Our next challenge is to address high-scale production and manufacturing, and we expect to start clinical trials in 2023,” says study leader Dr. María Lluch of the...

"The health, safety, and wellbeing of our Los Angeles Police Department officers is critical and we are ensuring the officers exposed to this disease are cared for," the department said in the statement. "First responders throughout the region and especially here in Los Angeles are constantly responding to incidents that put them at risk of potential exposure to various diseases, and that’s why the Department takes this incident very seriously. All of the work areas that may have been exposed have been disinfected." It was not immediately clear how the officers came into contact with the bacteria. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus...

Destiny Pharma’s antibiotic for post-surgical infections will begin its clinical development after the FDA accepted its Investigational New Drug application. Destiny Pharma wants to combat the growing antibiotic resistance crisis by targeting post-surgical Staphylococcus aureus infections like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The FDA has accepted an investigational new drug application (IND) for Destiny’s MRSA candidate, XF-73, which will allow the company to complete Phase I and finalize the design of a Phase II trial. XF-73 is a dicationic porphyrin molecule, which is a member of a new class of antibiotics called XF drugs. Interestingly, XF-73 is a nasal gel, which...

US scientists have discovered a new family of antibiotics in soil samples. The natural compounds could be used to combat hard-to-treat infections, the team at Rockefeller University hopes. Tests show the compounds, called malacidins, annihilate several bacterial diseases that have become resistant to most existing antibiotics, including the superbug MRSA. Experts say the work, published in Nature Microbiology, offers fresh hope in the antibiotics arms race. Dr Sean Brady's team at New York's Rockefeller University has been busy unearthing them. They used a gene sequencing technique to analyse more than 1,000 soil samples taken from across the US. When they...

Yes, say some international experts citing the rise of the super bug. But experts in UAE disagree and argue for better prescription protocols and patient responsibilityThe case of the six-year-old girl who developed antibiotic resistance is not an isolated one in the world of antibiotics. As these super drugs are routinely prescribed, controversies on their abuse and overuse are beginning to throw a big question-mark on whether antibiotics have outgrown their effectiveness. The question doing the rounds in many medical corridors is: Is the golden age of antibiotics over? “No, this is not true,” said Dr Sandeep Pargi, consultant pulmonologist...

Going into a hospital? It's getting riskier because of drug-resistant infections -- the kind almost no drug can cure. Despite one federal government "action plan" after another, the germs are winning. Government authorities are clueless about how many infections there are, or how many patients are dying. Alarming new research shows that one of the deadliest families of bugs, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, nicknamed CRE, may actually be striking three times more patients than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us. One lesson from the war against AIDS: Level with the public about the enormity of a problem if you...

10 babies within UC Irvine Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) contracted the superbug MRSA — a bacteria that is antibiotic resistant, which makes it hard to treat — during an eight month period, but the public is just finding out about it now. Contracting the superbug is a huge concern for babies who are already critically ill and have undeveloped immune systems, Finnstrom added. Officials stress that none of the sick infants died. They were each successfully treated.

Fifteen years after the U.S. declared drug-resistant infections to be a grave threat, the crisis is only worsening, a Reuters investigation finds, as government agencies remain unwilling or unable to impose reporting requirements on a healthcare industry that often hides the problem. According to their death certificates, Emma Grace Breaux died at age 3 from complications of the flu; Joshua Nahum died at age 27 from complications related to a skydiving accident; and Dan Greulich succumbed to cardiac arrhythmia at age 64 after a combined kidney and liver transplant. In each case – and in others Reuters found – death...

Scientists have discovered a new way to attack Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. The team, from Imperial College London, have revealed how the bacteria regulates its salt levels. The bacteria are a common source of food poisoning and are resistant to heat and high salt concentrations, which are used for food preparation and storage. The team hope to use this knowledge to develop a treatment that prevents food poisoning by ensuring all bacteria in food are killed. They are also investigating whether these findings could aid the development of a treatment for patients that would work alongside conventional antibiotics. Staphylococcus aureus bacterium...

Antibiotic made by nose microbes kills MRSA, say researchers, amid hopes that more weapons in the fight against drug resistance might be found in the body Nose-dwelling microbes produce an antibiotic which kills the hospital superbug MRSA, scientists have discovered. The finding suggests that the human body might harbour a rich variety of bacteria that could be harnessed in the fight against antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is a growing cause for concern, with experts warning of an impending “apocalyptic” situation in which patients die following routine surgery because of infections that can no longer be treated. Among the superbugs of...

Leaves of the European chestnut (Castanea sativa) contain ingredients with the power to block the virulence and pathogenesis of Staphylococcus aureus without detectable resistance, a new study has found. Rather than killing Staphylococcus aureus, the chestnut leaf extract — rich in oleanene and ursene derivatives (pentacyclic triterpenes) — works by taking away bacteria's weapons, essentially shutting off the ability of the bacteria to create toxins that cause tissue damage. "We have demonstrated in the lab that our extract disarms even the hyper-virulent MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) strains capable of causing serious infections in healthy athletes," said Dr Cassandra Quave of...

This may not be the biggest news story of the day, but it must be the most curious. As you are no doubt aware, there is great concern over resistance to conventional antibiotics. “Superbugs” are developing that are not easily killed with known medicines. So someone at the University of Nottingham, in England, thought to try an ancient remedy: a salve for eye infections found in Bald’s Leechbook, a 10th century Saxon volume in the British Library. The results were surprising: A one thousand year old Anglo-Saxon remedy for eye infections which originates from a manuscript in the British Library...

An ancient concoction for eye infections seems to really work. The potion, which contains cattle bile, kills the "superbug" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, researchers at Britain's University of Nottingham report. In fact, it worked better than the current gold standard for MRSA infections of the flesh, the antibiotic vancomycin, an expert at Texas Tech University found. Now researchers are working to see just what's in the salve that kills germs so effectively. It started with a joint project by two wildly different departments at the University of Nottingham. Dr. Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon expert in the School of English,...

It might sound like a really old wives' tale, but a thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon potion for eye infections may hold the key to wiping out the modern-day superbug MRSA, according to new research. The 10th-century "eyesalve" remedy was discovered at the British Library in a leather-bound volume of Bald's Leechbook, widely considered to be one of the earliest known medical textbooks. Christina Lee, an expert on Anglo-Saxon society from the School of English at the University of Nottingham, translated the ancient manuscript despite some ambiguities in the text. "We chose this recipe in Bald's Leechbook because it contains ingredients such as...

The leechbook is one of the earliest examples of what might loosely be called a medical textbook It seems Anglo-Saxon physicians may actually have practised something pretty close to the modern scientific method, with its emphasis on observation and experimentation. Bald's Leechbook could hold some important lessons for our modern day battle with anti-microbial resistance. line break n each case, they tested the individual ingredients against the bacteria, as well as the remedy and a control solution. They found the remedy killed up to 90% of MRSA bacteria and believe it is the effect of the recipe rather than one...

A thousand-year-old medieval remedy for eye infections which was discovered in a manuscript in the British Library has been found to kill the superbug MRSA. Anglo-Saxon expert Dr Christina Lee, from the School of English, at Nottingham University, recreated the 10th century potion to see if it really worked as an antibacterial remedy. The 'eyesalve' recipe calls for two species of Allium (garlic and onion or leek), wine and oxgall (bile from a cow’s stomach). It describes a very specific method of making the topical solution including the use of a brass vessel to brew it, a strainer to purify...