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Sarah Knapton, The TelegraphJune. 18, 2014 The global threat of antibiotic resistance could finally be tackled after British scientists discovered a chink in the armour of deadly bacteria. Health experts have warned that within 20 years even routine operations like hip replacements and organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection. But now scientists at the University of East Anglia have discovered how the bug responsible for E-coli and salmonella builds an impenetrable wall to keep out antibiotics. They believe that within a few years they could develop a drug which switches off the wall-building mechanism, making...

The Golden Age of Antibiotics is Over!! Exclusive: Limited Time Coast to Coast Listeners... Sign Up Below to Get One of My Best Selling eBooks for FREE! Secure & Confidential WE GURANTEE YOUR PRIVACY. We hate spam as much as you do. For 60 years we have lived protected by these CURE ALL drugs. Lives have been saved… Billions of lives. True, there have been complications, but that's because of abuse, not because of the wonderful life-saving properties of antibiotics. But NOW it's over: Antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria are spreading like wildfire. There are dozens of deadly antibiotic resistant...

A number of intestinal pathogens can cause problems after antibiotic administration, said Justin Sonnenburg, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology and the senior author of the study, to be published online Sept. 1 in Nature. Graduate students Katharine Ng and Jessica Ferreyra shared lead authorship. "Antibiotics open the door for these pathogens to take hold. But how, exactly, that occurs hasn't been well understood," Sonnenburg said. In the first 24 hours after administration of oral antibiotics, a spike in carbohydrate availability takes place in the gut, the study says. This transient nutrient surplus, combined with the reduction of friendly...

Enlarge Image Shaky sensor. A cantilever (c) covered with bacteria (b) shakes up and down as the bacteria metabolize on its surface, and the vibrations are detected by a laser beam. Credit: (left) Sandor Kasas; (right) Sandor Kasas and Giovanni Longo A patient admitted to a hospital with a serious bacterial infection may have only a few hours to live. Figuring out which antibiotic to administer, however, can take days. Doctors must grow the microbes in the presence of the drugs and see whether they reproduce. Rush the process, and they risk prescribing ineffective antibiotics, exposing the patient to...

Molecule changes shape to help organisms kick drugs out of cells. Japanese researchers have determined the detailed molecular structure of a protein that rids cells of toxins, but can also reduce the effectiveness of some antibiotics and cancer drugs by kicking them out of the cells they are targeting. The scientists have also identified a molecule that can thwart the activity of the protein, one of a class known as multidrug and toxic compound extrusion transporters (MATEs) that are found in cell membranes. The discovery suggests new approaches to combat antibiotic resistance and boost the power of cancer therapies, the...

Labeling foods is a moral thing to do to keep us from illness. There are so many questionable farming livestock practices which USDA allows, obviously those practices have great potential doing more harm to our body. Excerpt from the Article: Nine examples of what the public isn’t supposed to know (1) Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH):It’s injected into cows to force more milk production. Monsanto created it by combining cow DNA and E. coli (really). Now Eli Lily owns it. It infects cows’ udders, causing gross malformations and demands a plethora of antibiotic injections which furthers the creation of antibiotic...

A new drug compound can recharge a class of antibiotics used to fight superbug bacteria, improving the antibiotics’ effectiveness 16-fold. It’s another volley on the part of humans in the ongoing battle between new drugs and bacterial resistance. This new compound doesn’t fight the bacteria itself — it just makes the antibacterial drugs more potent, and better able to fight the bacteria despite the bugs’ resistance. The compound, developed at North Carolina State University, could help researchers fight an emerging problem with a tricky bacterial enzyme. The enzyme is called New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase, or NDM-1, and it has been found...

TAU engineers an easy-to-use solution to make hospitals saferAccording to the World Health Organization, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are one of the top three threats to human health. Patients in hospitals are especially at risk, with almost 100,000 deaths due to infection every year in the U.S. alone. Now Dr. Udi Qimron of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine has developed an efficient and cost-effective liquid solution that can help fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria and keep more patients safe from life-threatening infections. The solution is based on specially designed bacteriophages — viruses that infect...

The Federal Government announced charges today against a ring of foreign corporations and executives who conspired to bring antibiotic-laden Chinese honey illegally into the US, in an attempt to avoid paying millions in fees. A federal grand jury in Chicago indicted top executives of German food conglomerate Alfred L Wolff GmbH, and several of its affiliated companies for allegedly importing more than $US40 million in Chinese honey, but saying it originated elsewhere in order to avoid paying duties of nearly $US80 million that were levied on Chinese honey.

Cryptococcus is a type of fungus that is found in the soil worldwide, usually in association with bird droppings. The two types of the fungus that causes illness in human are Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii, which has been isolated from eucalyptus trees in tropical and sub-tropical regions. It has also been found growing on the remains of the Chernobyl Nuclear plant, showing that it likes radiation The infection caused by the fungus may cause a pneumonia-like illness, with shortness of breath, coughing and fever. Skin lesions may also occur. Another common form of cryptococcosis is central nervous system infection,...

Drug waste creates highest disaster zone in Andhra 27 Jan 2009, 0233 hrs IST, MARGIE MASON, AP PATANCHERU: When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000. And it's not just ciprofloxacin. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. It is the highest...

Even metaphorical wars can have flesh-and-blood casualties, and hospitals around the country are now tending to the victims of one of our fiercest. It is not so much that we are “losing” this particular war; simple notions of victory and defeat dropped away some time ago. Rather, locked in a spiral of costly and controversial escalations, we may have lost sight of who the enemy actually is.

Source: Society of Chemical Industry Date: January 29, 2007 New Approach Could Lower Antibiotic Requirements By 50 Times Science Daily — Antibiotic doses could be reduced by up to 50 times using a new approach based on bacteriophages. Steven Hagens, previously at the University of Vienna, told Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI, that certain bacteriophages, a type of virus that infects bacteria, can boost the effectiveness of antibiotics gentamicin, gramacidin or tetracycline. It is the phages' ability to channel through bacterial cell membranes that boosts antibiotic effectiveness. 'Pseudomonas bacteria for example are particularly multi-resistant to antibiotics because...

The Antibiotic VitaminDeficiency in vitamin D may predispose people to infection Janet Raloff In April 2005, a virulent strain of influenza hit a maximum-security forensic psychiatric hospital for men that's midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. John J. Cannell, a psychiatrist there, observed with increasing curiosity as one infected ward after another was quarantined to limit the outbreak. Although 10 percent of the facility's 1,200 patients ultimately developed the flu's fever and debilitating muscle aches, none did in the ward that he supervised. WINTER WOES. Cold-weather wear and the sun's angle in the winter sky limit how much ultraviolet...

Unnatural success Aimee Cunningham Chemists report the first synthesis of a promising antibiotic that other researchers recently discovered in nature. With the recipe in hand, scientists can pursue modifications that might make the compound more effective. Earlier this year, a team from Merck Research Laboratories announced the discovery of platensimycin, a small molecule produced by the bacterium Streptomyces platensis (SN: 5/20/06, p. 307: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060520/fob1.asp). Platensimycin killed certain drug-resistant pathogens by disrupting their synthesis of fatty acids. After seeing that "exciting report," K. C. Nicolaou of Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., says, he and his colleagues devised a strategy...

Survey of bacteria reveals an array of antibiotic-resistance. Bacteria that live in soil have been found to harbour an astonishing armoury of natural weapons to fight off antibiotics. The discovery could help researchers anticipate the next wave of drug-resistant 'superbugs'. Researchers have long known that soil-dwelling bacteria make natural antibiotics, and that they have inbuilt ways to survive their own and other bugs' toxins; in some cases, the genes that help them dodge antibiotics have transferred into infectious bugs that plague humans. Microbiologists have identified a few of the ways that soil microbes neutralize antibiotics. But Gerard Wright and his...

For those who have been there, Hell Week is a sleepless, bitter cold, gritty, soaking wet, hell on earth where exhausted candidates – pumped full of antibiotics to ward off a variety of infections – survive on sheer heart, tenacity, seemingly incomprehensible physical courage, and about 5,000-7,000 calories per day (given they can muster enough strength to consume them). Hell Week is a short span of eternity at Coronado, California where the SEAL hopeful comes to a reckoning of the soul. Here, he “realizes,” according to Commander Richard Marcinko (USN, ret.), “the body is only tissue and the mind/brain can...

“Korea’s Infection Rate of Super Bacteria reached an alarming level” MARCH 28, 2005 23:05 by TK Sohn ( sohn@donga.com) On November 26, 2004, about 250 students were infected with dysentery after eating their school lunch at Gyohyeon Elementary School in Chungju City, Chungbuk Province. Hospital administered a “third-generation cephalosporin antibiotic” on the students, but strangely enough, it didn’t work. The hospital immediately gave another antibiotic, ciprofloxacin, to the students and only managed to treat the dysentery. The National Public Health Research Institute tested the resistant genes of 267 AIDS patients who didn’t receive treatments and of the 45 AIDS patient...

The legacy of Fleming - 50 years on By Nick Triggle BBC News health reporter Concern about hospital infections such as MRSA is one of the most controversial issues in today's NHS. About 5,000 people die from such infections out of the many millions who go into hospitals each year. But 70 years ago, the situation was much worse. People could often die from a sore throat if the infection spread to the lungs. And pneumonia and post-operative infections killed one in three of those who got them. Within a decade that figure had dropped to just a few per...

Scientists have found a ''molecular Achilles heel'' in the organism that causes pneumonia, providing a target for the development of a new class of antibiotics that could eventually eradicate the disease. ''Streptococcus pneumoniae places an enormous burden on the welfare of humanity,'' says Thomas Leyh, Ph.D., a professor of biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and lead author of the paper. ''Worldwide, the organism takes the lives of some 3,700 people daily, the majority of whom are children below the age of five.'' From American Chemical Society: New antibiotic target could mean the end of...