As a result of concerns about antibiotic resistance, doctors in the United States are increasingly prescribing newer, more costly and more powerful antibiotics to treat urinary tract infections, one of the most common illnesses in women. Often they are not necessary.
Researchers at The Ohio State University have discovered a new class of treatment against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as well as evidence of a growing need to quickly genotype individual strains of the organism most commonly referred to as the “superbug.”
Menachem Shoham, PhD, of 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.
Cedars-Sinai researchers have found that a common vitamin may have the potential to provide a powerful weapon to fight certain “superbugs,” antibiotic-resistant staph infections that health experts see as a threat to public health.
A new study suggests that nicotinamide, more commonly known as vitamin B3, may be able to combat some of the antibiotic-resistance staph infections and "superbugs" that are increasingly common around the world, have killed thousands and can pose a significant threat to public health.
In analysis that included more than 9 million Department of Defense nonactive and active duty personnel, the rates of both community-onset and hospital-onset methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia decreased from 2005 to 2010, while the proportion of community-onset skin and soft tissue infections due to MRSA has more recently declined.
A paper recently published in Dermato-Endocrinology indicates that raising vitamin D concentrations among hospital patients has the potential to greatly reduce the risk of hospital-acquired infections.
The world needs new antibiotics to overcome the ever-increasing resistance of disease-causing bacteria – but it doesn’t need the side effect that comes with some of the most powerful ones now available: hearing loss. Researchers report they have developed a new approach to designing antibiotics that kill even “superbugs” but spare the inner ear.
McMaster University researchers have now discovered that floc – “goo-like” substances that occur suspended in water and that host large communities of bacteria – also contain high levels of antibiotic resistance.
The need to swab the noses of pregnant women and newborns for the presence of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) may be unfounded, according to a Vanderbilt study now available online and published in the May issue of Pediatrics. The study’s senior author, Buddy Creech, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of Pediatrics, said it is often feared that mothers carrying MRSA may risk transmitting an infection to their newborn babies, but Vanderbilt Pediatric Infectious Diseases researchers found that babies rarely became ill from MRSA infections, despite frequently carrying the germ.
Scientists find that the unfolded end of a protein can kill E. coli-like bacteria selectively. The results, which will be presented at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society, may one day help scientists find new, more targeted ways to kill antibiotic-resistant microbes.
A strain of the potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant bacterium known as MRSA has jumped from livestock to humans, according to a new study involving two Northern Arizona University researchers and scientists from around the world.
University at Buffalo researchers are expressing concern about a new, under-recognized, much more potent variant of a common bacterium that has surfaced in the U.S.
North Carolina State University chemists have created a compound that makes existing antibiotics 16 times more effective against recently discovered antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.”
The use of antimicrobial impregnated scrubs combined with good hand hygiene is effective in reducing the burden of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) on healthcare workers’ apparel and may potentially play a role in decreasing the risk of MRSA transmission to patients, according to a new study from Virginia Commonwealth University researchers.
UVA Researchers are the first in the world to develop a new, faster method for monitoring dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
NVC-422 called “effective alternative to known antimicrobial compounds.”
Millions of Americans take antibiotics each year to fight illness, trusting they'll work. However, the pathogens are fighting back. Within the past couple of years, new drug-resistant patterns have emerged, and resistance to common antibiotics has increased. According to Dr. Daniel Uslan, a UCLA infectious diseases expert, we can help this serious emerging problem by educating patients and health care workers about the proper use of antibiotics.
Ching-Hong Yang, a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has developed a compound that shuts off the “valve” in a pathogen’s DNA that allows it to invade and infect, blocking infection without the threat of antibiotic resistance.
Check into a hospital and you run the risk of infection with a methicillin-resistant strain of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. But present day MRSA might have been worse if it had descended directly from a 1950s version of the bug, according to a study co-authored by Barry N. Kreiswirth, PhD, a professor at the Public Health Research Institute of UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Antibiotic resistant E. Coli was much more prevalent in villages situated along roads than in rural villages located away from roads, which suggests that roads play a major role in the spread or containment of antibiotic resistant bacteria, commonly called superbugs, a new study finds.
The latest evidence for NVC-422’s power against biofilms comes from a just-published study by researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia. The study focused on sinusitis, an ailment marked by an inflammation of the paranasal sinuses, often as a consequence of a bacterial infection.
An analysis of the genome of a superbug has yielded crucial, novel information that could aid efforts to counteract the bacterium’s resistance to an antibiotic of last resort. The results of the research led by scientists from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) are published in the Sept. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers discovered antibiotic resistant genes existed beside genes that encoded DNA for ancient life. They focused on a specific area of antibiotic resistance to the drug vancomycin, a significant clinical problem that emerged in 1980s and continues to be associated with outbreaks of hospital-acquired infections worldwide.
A Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study of more than 3,000 hospitalized children shows that those colonized but not sick with the antibiotic-resistant bacterium MRSA are at considerable risk for developing full-blown infections.
In the zeal to eliminate dangerous bacteria, it is possible that we are also permanently killing off beneficial bacteria as well, posits Martin Blaser, MD, Frederick H. King Professor of Medicine, professor of Microbiology and chair of the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center. His commentary is published in the August 25 edition of the journal Nature.
Interdisciplinary team of scientists investigate and compare Acinetobacter baumannii genomic profile from body sites within hospital setting
Superbug CRKP is just the latest in emerging strains of drug-resistant bacteria. While new drugs to combat these stealthy microbes like MRSA and CRKP remain in development, a UCLA expert discusses the impact of the superbugs and what we can do to help prevent catching and spreading these dangerous bacteria.
Disease-causing bacteria can survive for days on wind instruments and may thus contribute to sickness in people who play wind instruments, especially students who share instruments, report researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine.
Researcher from UMDNJ-NJMS and the University of Manchester have used a new test that employs molecular beacon technology to better diagnose Aspergillus infections and resistance to drugs used to treat patients with aspergillosis.
A new research study of the effect of a commonly used strategy to reduce the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in hospital intensive care units (ICU) shows that the strategy had no significant effect. That’s the surprising finding of a multisite study led by Mayo Clinic investigators.
Wrapping antibiotics in nanofibers so tiny they can’t be seen under a microscope, and injecting them into the body, turns bacteria and fungi that cause food poisoning and hospital-acquired infections into ghosts of themselves, potentially overcoming the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance.
Antibiotics resistant strains of bacteria and fungi, or "superbugs," are on the rise, killing tens of thousands of people each year. As the critical need for new classes of antibiotics grows, scientists are looking for miracles in unexplored realms of the ocean, home to an array microbes skilled at killing competitors. Scientists at UNC Wilmington hope to fund their groundbreaking work in a unique way – with the help of a $50,000 Pepsi Refresh grant.
Knowledge gaps and fear — some of it unjustified — are common among the caregivers of children with a drug-resistant staph bacterium known as MRSA, according to the results of a small study from the Johns Hopkins Children Center. These caregivers thirst for timely, detailed and simple information, the researchers add.
In a survey of Chicago-area healthcare facilities, researchers at Rush University Medical Center and the Cook County Department of Public Health have found that the incidence of KPC-producing bacteria is rising. These bugs cause infections with high mortality rates and are resistant to the most commonly used antibiotics.
Scientists in New Mexico are working on a new type of antimicrobial surface that won’t harm people or animals but is inhospitable to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) -- the bacterial cause of an estimated 19,000 deaths and $3-4 billion in healthcare costs per year in the U.S.
A study by two Florida State University biochemists makes an important contribution to science’s understanding of a serious problem causing concern worldwide: the growing resistance of some harmful bacteria to the drugs that were intended to kill them.
Researchers led by Iowa State's Edward Yu have discovered the crystal structures of pumps that allow bacteria to resist heavy metal toxins and antibiotics. Their discovery is reported in the Sept. 23 edition of the journal Nature.
Infants who received heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccination (PCV-7) at 2, 4, and 11 months were more likely than unvaccinated controls to have nasopharyngeal (in the nasal passages and upper part of the throat behind the nose) acquisition of pneumococcal serotype 19A, a leading cause of respiratory pneumococcal disease, according to a study in the September 8 issue of JAMA.
An antibacterial peptide looks to be a highly-effective therapy against infections in burn or blast wounds suffered by soldiers.
Dr. William A. Petri Jr. of the University of Virginia is an authority on Clostridium difficile, a tenacious bacterium that causes half a million infections a year.
Kissing a frog won’t turn it into a prince — except in fairy-tales ― but frogs may be hopping toward a real-world transformation into princely allies in humanity’s battle with antibiotic-resistant infections that threaten millions of people. Scientists reported that frog skin contains substances that could be the basis for a new genre of antibiotics. Their study is scheduled for presentation in August at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Boston.
Building on an enzyme found in nature, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created a nanoscale coating for surgical equipment, hospital walls, and other surfaces which safely eradicates methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the bacteria responsible for antibiotic resistant infections.
Two studies point to a new way to a vaccinate against drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- also known as MRSA. One counteracts the bacteria's tools for evading the immune system; the other disrupts the germ's tissue-damaging mechanism. The combination may protect people from MRSA and provide lasting immunity.
An analysis of data from 2005 through 2008 of nine metropolitan areas in the U.S. indicates that health care-associated invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections decreased among patients with infections that began in the community or in the hospital, according to a study in the August 11 issue of JAMA.
When used in conjunction with these antibiotics, the chemical additives overcome enzymes produced by resistant bacteria that allow them to survive exposure to antibiotics.
Northeastern biology professor Kim Lewis has received a three-year $1.16 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to lead the development of new treatments against tuberculosis, a disease that is increasingly resistant to antibiotics, killing nearly two million people worldwide each year.
Microbiologists at UT Southwestern Medical Center, working with the Department of Agriculture, have identified a potential target in cattle that could be exploited to help prevent outbreaks of food-borne illnesses caused by a nasty strain of Escherichia coli.
A renowned researcher calls for a global commitment to develop 10 new antibiotics by 2020 in a new government health-care blog. Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) President Richard Whitley, M.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, blogs on the dangers of antibiotic resistance and what has become one of the greatest threats to human health.
An intensive program of surveillance, precautions, training and feedback in a large multihospital institution appears to be associated with reductions in rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) over a 15-year period, according to a report in the March 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
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