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AUSTRALIAN air power has taken "a quantum leap forward" with the delivery of five F/A-18F Super Hornets yesterday. The five jets - the first of 24 - will tide the air force over until the arrival of the stealthy, fifth-generation F-35 joint strike fighter. They are the first new Royal Australian Air Force jets since 1985 and will be based at the Amberley air base, west of Brisbane. Speaking at the Super Hornets' official arrival yesterday, US Navy Rear Admiral Mark Skinner said the jets delivered new levels of "range, payload, lethality and survivability".

Nov. 2, 2009 (Philadelphia) -- A newly discovered strain of drug-resistant staph bacteria is five times more deadly than other strains, a new study suggests. Adding insult to injury, the new superbug appears to have some resistance to the antibiotic commonly used to treat it, researchers report. Half of patients infected with the new strain of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) died within 30 days, says Carol Moore, PharmD, a research investigator in infectious diseases at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. That compares to only about 10% of patients infected with other MRSA strains, she tells WebMD. Moore and colleagues studied...

A new strain of MRSA seems to be triggering a deadly form of pneumonia in people who catch flu, experts say.

You can’t help but feel a little sorry for Amanda Beck. She’s a reporter from Reuters who was among the first to cover a new study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, which warns about an outbreak of a virulent, drug-resistant, and potentially deadly strain of Staph infection afflicting certain segments of the homosexual community. Although outbreaks of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, have primarily been confined to hospitals in the past, the study determined that, due to “high risk behaviors” beyond hospital walls — such as “anal sex” — men who have sex with men...

(NewsTarget) Nearly five percent of patients in U.S. hospitals may have acquired a particular antibiotic resistant staph infection, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). Researchers surveyed a total of 1,200 hospitals and other health care facilities from all 50 states, and found 8,000 patients infected or colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) -- or 46 out of every 1,000. This suggests that up to 1.2 million hospital patients across the country may be infected every year. Colonized patients are those who were found to be carrying the bacteria in...

Scientists Strike Blow In Superbugs Struggle ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2007) — Scientists from The University of Manchester have pioneered new ways of tweaking the molecular structure of antibiotics -- an innovation that could be crucial in the fight against powerful super bugs. The work was led by chemical biologist Dr Jason Micklefield in collaboration with geneticist Professor Colin Smith. Scientists working in The School of Chemistry and the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre have paved the way for the development of new types of antibiotics capable of fighting increasingly resistant bacteria. Micklefield, Smith and colleagues were the first to engineer the biosynthesis...

Developing Kryptonite For Superbug ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2007) — University of Idaho researchers are crossing academic and geographical bounds to develop more effective defenses against Staphylococcus aureus bacteria and other deadly pathogens. One of the goals of that effort is to create much faster and more accurate identification of strains resistant to the antibiotic methicillin, formally known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. Breakthrough detection technologies are already in hand in University of Idaho labs. Nanoelectronic biosensors at the university’s Center for Advanced Microelectronics and Biomolecular Research (CAMBR) recently have cut detection time for staph from the industry standard of...

Cold war weaponry to tackle superbugs By Gary Cleland Last Updated: 5:47pm GMT 28/10/2007 Technology developed to protect Britain from biological weapons is being redeployed into hospitals to help destroy superbugs. Among the first hospital trusts to install the air disinfection units will be Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, where at least 90 people died from the bug Clostridium difficile. The machines, first developed at the British defence establishment Porton Down in the 1960s, have been approved by an NHS ethics committee after trials at hospitals in Sunderland, Manchester and Carlisle. Tests showed the machines are capable of killing...

MRSA 'deadlier than bioweapons' Last Updated: 2:44am BST 23/10/2007 Superbugs such as MRSA pose a far greater threat to humanity than bioterrorism, a genetics pioneer claimed. Dr Venter warns of the superbug threat The warning came from Craig Venter, an American scientist currently working on a project which uses DNA building blocks to create the world's first synthetic life form. Critics argue that artificially-created microbes – bacteria which can cause disease – potentially pose a grave danger, by either invading the environment or being used to manufacture deadly bioweapons. But Dr Venter maintains that drug-resistant bacteria such as MRSA are...

CHICAGO — More than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," the government reported Tuesday in its first overall estimate of invasive disease caused by the germ. Deaths tied to these infections may exceed those caused by AIDS, said one public health expert commenting on the new study. The report shows just how far one form of the staph germ has spread beyond its traditional hospital setting. The overall incidence rate was about 32 invasive infections per 100,000 people. That's an "astounding" figure, said an editorial in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association,...

Appalling standards of care and a catalogue of failures contributed to the deaths of 331 patients in the worst outbreak of a hospital superbug ever recorded in the NHS, a report has found. Crowded wards, a shortage of nurses and financial problems led to 1,176 people contracting Clostridium difficile over two and half years at three hospitals in Kent. Though the superbug was rife on the wards, managers failed to act. Isolation units were not set up, nurses were so rushed they did not have time to wash their hands and patients were left in soiled beds. Bedpans were not...

Superbug kills war hero who survived three years as a PoWLast updated at 00:42am on 1st September 2007  The family of a distinguished war veteran have criticised the hospital where he was infected by a killer bug. Major Sam Weller - who survived three years as a prisoner of war - died after catching Clostridium Difficile following an operation on his hip. His relatives said he had been let down by the country he fought for. Major Weller, 88, had surgery at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital but he developed an infection and was given a course of antibiotics. Weeks later...

Around 60,000 people could be infected this year with the most widespread hospital superbug despite campaigns to tackle the problem, new figures out today show.In the first three months of this year 15,592 people over the age of 65 were infected with Clostridium difficile, a two per cent rise on the same period last year. The bug takes hold in the guts of patients who have been given antibiotics and causes thousands of deaths. There were a total of 55,634 cases of C.Diff in 2006. The new figures from the Health Protection Agency show rates of the other major health...

Second superbug outbreak kills thirteen By Martin Beckford Last Updated: 11:38am BST 05/04/2007 Thirteen patients suffering from the superbug Clostridium difficile have died at another Norfolk hospital. It was revealed last week that an outbreak of the bug has killed 17 people at the James Paget Hospital in Gorleston, near Great Yarmouth, since December. Now the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in King’s Lynn, just 65 miles away, has said that 13 of its patients who had C.difficile have died since the start of the year. The bug, which causes severe diarrhoea, was directly responsible for eight of the deaths and...

Superbug death was 'diabolical' By Laura Donnelly and Jasper Copping, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 11:25pm BST 31/03/2007 The widow of a man who fell victim to a superbug that has claimed 17 lives at a Norfolk hospital yesterday described his death as "diabolical". Great-grandfather Leslie Burton-Pye, 74, was infected with Clostridium difficile in January while visiting the James Paget Hospital in Gorleston for a blood transfusion. He fell ill soon after and was admitted to the hospital where he stayed until released in mid-March. He was re-admitted last Sunday and died the next day. Yesterday, his widow, Mavis, 67, said:...

rp rise in suberbug death toll By Matthew Moore and PA Last Updated: 3:04pm GMT 22/02/2007 More patients are dying of conditions linked to the hospital superbugs MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C-diff), it was revealed today. Between 2004 and 2005, mention of MRSA on death certificates rose by 39 per cent while mention of C-diff rose 69 per cent, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The Conservatives today described the rise as "staggering", and said the Government had failed to put in place an effective strategy for combatting the bugs. "Labour's savage bed cuts over the...

Superbug emerging across Canada Sharon Kirkey, CanWest News Service Published: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 A superbug that causes infections from large, boil-like lesions to hemorrhagic pneumonia and, in rare cases, ''flesh-eating'' disease is poised to ''emerge in force'' across Canada, a new report warns. While the prospect of a flu pandemic has governments scrambling to develop emergency plans, an epidemic of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or CA-MRSA, is already raging in the U.S. and beginning to entrench itself here, infectious disease experts report today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. In the U.S., clusters have been reported in groups from...

Tie ban for doctors to stop spread of MRSA By Alex Berry Last Updated: 2:35am GMT 18/12/2006 Doctors have been ordered to ditch their ties over fears they are spreading the deadly hospital superbug MRSA. An NHS trust has also told all its staff involved in direct patient care not to wear jewellery, wrist watches, scarves or any "superfluous clothing". Even consultants have been warned that being smartly-dressed when giving patients bad news could present an infection risk. The move, by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, follows a report by the British Medical Association calling for doctors to...

Hospitals told to isolate patients with superbug By Beezy Marsh, Health Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:27am GMT 19/11/2006 Hospitals have been ordered to create MRSA isolation wards where necessary to treat patients infected with the superbug. Under controversial Government plans, all elderly people admitted from nursing homes will be screened for MRSA and forced to use antibacterial shampoo, shower gels and creams as a precaution. Millions more patients scheduled for operations such as hip replacements and heart and brain surgery will also be checked for infection. According to the Department of Health guidance, those found to be infected should...

Hospitals fail to report spread of new superbug 'more dangerous than MRSA' Beezy Marsh, Health Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:13am GMT 05/11/2006 The spread of a dangerous new superbug through hospitals is being hugely underestimated by the Government's reporting scheme, NHS staff have admitted. The shambolic state of infection control on wards is exposed in a survey by the Patients' Association. It found only about a quarter of trusts are gathering data on Clostridium difficile (C. diff), the bacterium that experts say poses more of a risk to public health than MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus). Clostridium difficile: More of...