Free Republic

Scientists at Northeastern University have discovered an antibiotic in the soil that looks to be effective at killing deadly pathogens like MRSA and tuberculosis. Even more promising, lead researcher Kim Lewis says those pathogens weren't able to develop a resistance to the antibiotic.

Lauren F Friedman and Reuters January 7, 2015Scientists have discovered a new antibiotic, teixobactin, that can kill serious infections in mice without encountering any detectable resistance, offering a potential new way to get ahead of dangerous evolving superbugs. The new antibiotic was discovered in a sample of soil. The research is "ingenious," Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, told The New York Times. Researchers said the antibiotic, which has yet to be tested in humans, could one day be used to treat drug-resistant infections caused by the superbug MRSA, as well as tuberculosis, which normally requires...

“The idea that Ebola will take over the United States is an unfounded fear,” said Dr. Liise-Anne Pirofski, chief of infectious diseases at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Influenza MRSA Resistant Gonorrhea

If you must worry about a new plague, focus on antibiotic-resistant bugs like MRSA and C. difficiles We’re now witnessing the worst Ebola epidemic ever. It’s spun “out of control,” warns one of the world’s most influential newspapers. What’s not to be afraid of? Well, Ebola.

MCALLEN, TX - There’s a growing health concern with hundreds of illegal immigrants crossing over into southern Texas. U.S. Border Patrol agents are worried that what's coming over into the U.S. could harm everyone. This time the focus is not on the women and children that are crossing over in droves. Agents are worrying about a viral outbreak. “We are sending people everywhere. The average person doesn't know what's going on down here,” said Border Patrol agent and Rio Grande Valley Union representative Chris Cabrera. Cabrera says agents are seeing illegal immigrants come over with contagious infections. Detention centers and...

The debate weighing up the relative harms and benefits of e-cigarettes continues. New evidence suggests that e-cigarettes boost the virulence of drug-resistant pathogens, according to researchers at the VA San Diego Healthcare System and the University of California, San Diego. :snip: Dr. Crotty Alexander and her team grew methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in culture. They found that exposing the MRSA to e-cigarette vapor - similar in concentration to e-cigarette products available on the market - increased the virulence of the bacteria, making it better able to establish infection in the body and cause more severe disease. :snip: The e-cigarette vapor...

According to new research published this week in the journal Nature, an acyldepsipeptide antibiotic called ADEP in combination with the bactericidal antibiotic drug rifampicin eliminates the methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus.This scanning electron micrograph shows the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Image credit: NIAID. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a bacterium that is resistant to many antibiotics. It is responsible for several chronic infections such as osteomyelitis, endocarditis, or infections of implanted medical devices. These infections are often incurable, even when appropriate antibiotics are used.Senior author of the study, Prof Kim Lewis of Northeastern University, suspected that a different adaptive function of bacteria...

LESS THAN A CENTURY AGO, the age-old evolutionary relationship between humans and microbes was transformed not by a gene, but by an idea. The antibiotic revolution inaugurated the era of modern medicine, trivializing once-deadly infections and paving the way for medical breakthroughs: organ transplants and chemotherapy would be impossible without the ability to eliminate harmful bacteria seemingly at will. But perhaps every revolution contains the seeds for its own undoing, and antibiotics are no exception: antibiotic resistance—the rise of bacteria impervious to the new “cure”—has followed hard on the heels of each miracle drug. Recently, signs have arisen that the...

Microbiologists are trying to work out whether use of antibiotics on farms is fuelling the human epidemic of drug-resistant bacteria. The sight of just one boot coming through the doorway cues the clatter of tiny hoofs as 500 piglets scramble away from Mike Male. “That's the sound of healthy pigs,” shouts Male, a veterinarian who has been working on pig farms for more than 30 years. On a hot June afternoon, he walks down the central aisle of a nursery in eastern Iowa, scoops up a piglet and dangles her by her hind legs. A newborn piglet's navel is an...

A team of researchers led by Dr Angelika Gründling from Imperial College London has discovered 4 proteins that act as receptors for an essential signalling molecule in bacteria such as the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).This micrograph shows methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (Janice Haney Carr / CDC / Jeff Hageman / M.H.S.) A recently discovered molecule called cyclic diadenylate monophosphate (c-di-AMP for short) appears to play a vital role as a messenger in many bacteria, carrying signals between parts of the cell. There is evidence that strains with more c-di-AMP are more resistant to antibiotics.But until now, very little was known about...

According to a new study reported in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, a human breast milk protein complex called HAMLET can help reverse the antibiotic resistance of bacterial species, including penicillin-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.The image shows a healthy Streptococcus pneumoniae bacterial cell, upper left, next to a bacterial cell destroyed and lysed by the human milk protein complex HAMLET, lower right (Laura R. Marks) In petri dish and animal experiments, HAMLET (Human Alpha-lactalbumin Made Lethal to Tumor Cells) increased bacteria’s sensitivity to multiple classes of antibiotics, such as penicillin and erythromycin.“The effect was so pronounced that bacteria...

Known for its painful skin infections as much as its namesake resistance to methicillin, MRSA is a scary germ in a world where old antibiotics don't always work. But now, researchers have managed to make MRSA sensitive to methicillin again by pairing the drug with a protein complex first discovered in breast milk. In a paper published today in PLOS ONE, the researchers show that the complex, known as HAMLET (for human alpha-lactalbumin made lethal to tumor cells—it's multitalented) helped methicillin kill MRSA in the noses of mice at a dose of 10 micrograms, while the antibiotic alone was ineffective...

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...

Whole-genome analysis helps identify source of MRSA outbreak on infant ward. A superbug outbreak that plagued a special-care neonatal unit in Cambridge, UK, for several months last year was brought to an end by insights gained from genome sequencing. The case, reported today in Lancet Infectious Disease, marks the first time that scientists have sequenced pathogen genomes to actively control an ongoing outbreak1. Sharon Peacock, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Cambridge, and her team became involved in the outbreak after three infants at nearby Rosie Hospital’s 24-cot special-care baby unit tested positive for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) within...

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...

Menachem Shoham, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has discovered novel antivirulence drugs that, without killing the bacteria, render Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) and Streptococcus pyogenes, commonly referred to as strep, harmless by preventing the production of toxins that cause disease. The promising discovery was presented this week at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco. MRSA infections are a growing public health concern, causing 20,000 to 40,000 deaths per year in the United States alone. It is the most prevalent bacterial pathogen in hospital settings and in...

Strain of MRSA from the U.S. causes large boils and is resistant to several front-line antibiotics Survives on surfaces so can be picked up on public transport A flesh-eating form of pneumonia that is easily passed between healthy people on public transport is spreading across the UK, experts have warned.

A novel form of deadly drug-resistant bacteria that hides from a standard test has turned up in Europe. Researchers found the so-called MRSA strain in both dairy cows and humans in the United Kingdom, suggesting that it might be passed from dairies to the general population. But before you toss your milk, don't panic: The superbug isn't a concern in pasteurized dairy products. MRSA, short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is a drug-resistant form of the widespread and normally harmless S. aureus bacteria. Many people walk around with MRSA in their noses or on their skin yet don't get sick. But...

Research at the Medical Research Council (MRC) has highlighted genes in the bacterium Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that may help the superbug to survive after it has been targeted by antibacterial agents. This discovery could inform the development of future drugs to overcome MRSA’s defence systems. The research team, including scientists at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh and the Universities of St Andrews, Dundee and London, developed a gene map to improve understanding of how MRSA escapes being killed by antimicrobials. For the first time, they were able to map relationships between 95 per cent of MRSA genes,...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Hate insects? Afraid of germs? Researchers are reporting an alarming combination: bedbugs carrying a staph “superbug.” Canadian scientists detected drug-resistant staph bacteria in bedbugs from three hospital patients from a downtrodden Vancouver neighborhood.