antibiotic resistance

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Federal Prize Competition Seeks Innovative Ideas to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance

Press Release | National Institutes of Health | September 8, 2016

A federal prize competition launched today is calling for innovative ideas for rapid, point-of-care laboratory diagnostic tests to combat the development and spread of drug resistant bacteria, a rising public health threat. Antibiotic resistant bacteria cause at least 2 million infections and 23,000 deaths each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostic Challenge will award $20 million in prizes over all phases of the competition for new, innovative and novel laboratory diagnostic tests...

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First Nations’ Ancient Medicinal Clay Shows Promise Against Today’s Worst Bacterial Infections

Press Release | University of British Columbia | January 26, 2016

Naturally occurring clay from Kisameet Bay, B.C. — long used by the Heiltsuk First Nation for its healing potential — exhibits potent antibacterial activity against multidrug-resistant pathogens, according to new research from the University of British Columbia. The researchers recommend the rare mineral clay be studied as a clinical treatment for serious infections caused by ESKAPE strains of bacteria...

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First Research Programme Identifies Potential Antibiotic Resistance Breakers

Press Release | Antibiotic Research UK | December 1, 2016

Antibiotic Research UK's first research programme finds a number of drugs that can break antibiotic resistance in Gram-negative bacteria. Antibiotic resistant infections are predicted to lead to 10 million deaths per year globally by 2050 at a cost of up to $100 trillion to the world economy. In the UK at least 5,000 people per year die from resistant infections. New research by Antibiotic Research UK (ANTRUK), the world's first charity created to develop new antibiotics in the fight against superbugs, has found Antibiotic Resistance Breakers (ARBs) in its first major lab research programme...

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Fish Exposed to Wastewater Absorb Many Medications Meant for People

Lisa Esposito | U.S. News & World Report | August 2, 2017

Evidence that fish are being contaminated by pharmaceuticals introduced into wastewater keeps building. That's clear as scientists look beyond drug levels in bodies of water and directly measure concentrations in the blood of fish that swim there, as one team undertook for a new study published July 26 in the journal Environmental Pollution. While experts say human health isn't at risk, unknowns remain, given the increases in pollution levels as the population grows...

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Government Leadership On Antibiotic Resistance — In Europe

Maryn McKenna | WIRED | July 3, 2014

A few pieces of news relative to antibiotic resistance caught my eye over the past few days. What they all had in common: Highly placed politicians stating unambiguously that antibiotic resistance should be a national and international priority...

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Hospital Antibiotic Use Can Put Patients At Risk, Study Says

Lena H. Sun | The Washington Post | March 4, 2014

Doctors in some hospitals prescribe up to three times as many antibiotics as doctors at other hospitals, putting patients at greater risk for deadly superbug infections, according to a federal study released Tuesday. Read More »

Hospitals' Struggles To Beat Back Familiar Infections Before Ebola Arrived

Staff Writer | Kaiser Health News | October 23, 2014

While Ebola stokes public anxiety, more than one in six hospitals – including some top medical centers – are having trouble stamping out less exotic but sometimes deadly infections, federal records show...

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How Congress Ignored Science and Fueled Antibiotic Resistance

Maryn McKenna | Wired | September 12, 2017

The study was being conducted by Dr. Stuart B. Levy, a researcher in Boston. Levy was 36 in 1974. He was the son of a family doctor from Delaware and had grown up accompanying his father on house calls and discussing cases afterward. He was a faculty member at Tufts University School of Medicine, in a part of Boston that is gentrified now but was cheap and seedy then, and he had taken a circuitous route to get there, studying first literature, then medicine, and then microbiology in Italy and France...

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How Industrial Agriculture Has Thwarted Factory Farm Reforms

Christina M. Russo | Yale Environment 360 | November 19, 2013

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Robert Martin, co-author of a recent study on industrial farm animal production, explains how a powerful and intransigent agriculture lobby has successfully fought off attempts to reduce the harmful environmental and health impacts of mass livestock production. Read More »

How Superbugs Threaten Your Food And Life

Sanchita Sharma | Hindustan Times | May 10, 2014

...This worrying problem causing as much global concern as terrorism is antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics, the wonder drugs that made surgery safe and stopped disease outbreaks by preventing and curing all infections four decades ago, can no longer do so...

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How We Could Kill Superbugs Without Antibiotics

Charlie Sorrel | Co.Exist | March 1, 2016

Antibiotics will soon be useless, but U.K. scientists have come up with a new way to kill bacteria—and it's not with a drug. And perhaps the best thing about this approach is that bacteria may not be able to build resistance against it. A team from the University of East Anglia, publishing in the journal Nature, figured out that the key to destroying bacteria is understanding how they build their defensive walls. It’s like ruining an astronaut’s space suit instead of going after the astronauts inside...

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Investigation Finds Online Pharmacies 'Freely' Prescribing Antibiotics

Staff Writer | The Telegraph | October 2, 2016

An investigation has been launched after online pharmacies were accused of over prescribing antibiotics to undercover reporters. The General Medical Council (GMC) launched the probe based on evidence collected by BBC Radio 5 live, and said that "the overprescribing of antibiotics risks the health of us all". The investigation looked at 17 UK-based pharmacies selling antibiotics online and in one case a reporter posing as a patient was issued with three prescriptions in the space of just 24 hours...

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Is The US Meat Industry Pushing Us Into A ‘Post-Antibiotic Era’?

Lauren Rothman | Munchies | October 24, 2014

...Big Meat’s rampant use of antibiotics is one of the most worrying aspects of the meat industry, an issue that unites public health advocates, doctors, consumers, and others in shared concern...

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L.A. County Patient Was Infected with Drug-Resistant E. coli

Soumya Karlamangla | Los Angeles Times | January 31, 2017

Scientists were alarmed last year when they found that a woman in Pennsylvania had been infected with bacteria that was resistant to colistin, an antibiotic that is considered the last line of defense against particularly nasty illnesses. It was a scary reminder that bacteria are increasingly able to survive antibiotics, making some infections extremely difficult or even impossible to treat. Now California is on a list of six states where patients have been infected with bacteria that contains a gene known as mcr-1, which makes it resistant to colistin...

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Liposomes Could be a Possible Alternative To Antibiotics

Press Release | University of Bern | November 2, 2014

Scientists from the University of Bern have developed a novel substance for the treatment of severe bacterial infections without antibiotics, which would prevent the development of antibiotic resistance...

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