Antibiotics

See the following -

Stop Killing The Good Guys! Protect Your Child's Microbiome From Antibiotic Overuse

Aviva Romm | Huffington Post | January 8, 2015

...The average child in the United States will receive between and 10 and 20 courses of antibiotics by the time he or she is 18 years old. (2) We are so accustomed to antibiotics being prescribed for childhood illnesses that we assume that they are as safe as they are common...

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Study Finds That Up To Half Of Antibiotics Fail Due To 'Superbugs'

Rebecca Smith | Business Insider | September 26, 2014

GPs are increasingly handing out antibiotics that turn out to be useless, as up to half of courses of the drugs 'fail' and result in further treatment, a study has found...

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Study: Hospitals Give Patients Antibiotics For No Reason At All

Gabrielle Canon | Mother Jones | October 10, 2014

Some hospital patients are on antibiotics for good reason: They have an infection, or they're at high risk for getting one. But according to a new study, other patients are given antibiotics for no reason whatsoever...

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Superbugs Are A 'Costly War We Can't Win': Doctors

Mark Koba | CNBC | April 4, 2013

Germs are perfect machines of evolution. Their ability to mutate and survive attempts (by humans and nature) to destroy them has led to some being called "superbugs." Resistant to existing antibiotics, superbug-related infections worldwide result in thousands of deaths each year—an estimated 99,000 in the U.S. alone for each of the past 10 years. Read More »

SuperChefs Against Superbugs

Staff Writer | Pew | October 16, 2013

SuperChefs Against Superbugs is a movement of chefs from across the country who want to stop the overuse of antibiotics on industrial farms. Read More »

The Antibiotic Resistance Coalition (ARC)

Press Release | Antibiotic Resistance Coalition (ARC) | May 22, 2014

Act now, or face catastrophic post-antibiotic era Read More »

The Grim Propect of Antibiotic Resistance

Staff Writer | The Economist | May 21, 2016

When people hear about antibiotic resistance creating “superbugs”, they tend to think of new diseases and pandemics spreading out of control. The real threat is less flamboyant, but still serious: existing problems getting worse, sometimes dramatically. Infections acquired in hospital are a prime example. They are already a problem, but with more antibiotic resistance they could become a much worse one. Elective surgery, such as hip replacements, now routine, would come to carry what might be seen as unacceptable risk. So might Caesarean sections. The risks of procedures which suppress the immune system, such as organ transplants and cancer chemotherapies, would increase...

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The Threat From Antibiotic Use On The Farm

Donald Kennedy | The Washington Post | August 22, 2013

When I was commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency’s national advisory committee recommended in 1977 that we eliminate an agricultural practice that threatened human health. Routinely feeding low doses of antibiotics to healthy livestock, our scientific advisory committee warned, was breeding drug-resistant bacteria that could infect people. Read More »

The Way You’re Born Can Mess With The Microbes You Need To Survive

Martin J. Blaser | Wired | April 3, 2014

Throughout the animal kingdom, mothers transfer microbes to their young while giving birth. [...] [For] millennia, mammalian babies have acquired founding populations of microbes by passing through their mothers’ vagina. This microbial handoff is also a critical aspect of infant health in humans. Today it is in peril. Read More »

They’re Feeding WHAT To Cows?

Brad Jacobson | OnEarth | December 12, 2013

'Poultry litter' is exactly what it sounds like: the filthy stuff scraped off the floor of a chicken coop. Feeding it to cattle (yes, that happens) risks the spread of mad cow disease—yet the FDA has done nothing to stop it. Read More »

Tracking Deadly Superbug Infections Across Europe with Web-Based Open Tools that Use Genome Sequencing and Open APIs

Press Release | Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute | May 5, 2016

For the first time, scientists have shown that MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and other antibiotic-resistant ‘superbug’ infections can be tracked across Europe by combining whole-genome sequencing with a web-based system. In mBio today (5 May 2016) researchers at Imperial College London and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute worked with a European network representing doctors in 450 hospitals in 25 countries to successfully interpret and visualise the spread of drug-resistant MRSA...

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Traveling Abroad? Careful What You Carry Back… In Your Guts

Maryn McKenna | Wired | April 10, 2014

If you do any kind of challenging travel — adventure travel, backpacking, even just going to less-developed parts of the world — you’ve probably evolved some sort of protective routine. [...] But a new study just published in EuroSurveillance, the peer-reviewed journal of Europe’s equivalent of the CDC, raises the possibility that even if you are doing the right thing, you could pick up some very nasty stuff while you’re abroad [...]. Read More »

Up To Half Of Antibiotics 'Fail Due To Superbugs' Study Finds

Rebecca Smith | The Telegraph | September 26, 2014

GPs are increasingly handing out antibiotics that turn out to be useless, as up to half of courses of the drugs 'fail' and result in further treatment, a study has found.
Groundbreaking research has analysed 11m courses of antibiotics prescribed to British patients over the last 22 years covering the most common diseases areas including tonsilitis, pneumonia and ear infections...

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Warren Questions FDA Commissioner About Antibiotics Guidance

Lydia Zuraw | Food Safety News | March 14, 2014

The issue of antibiotics in animal feed reared its head again Thursday as U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questioned Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg about the effectiveness of Guidance 213 during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) hearing. Read More »

We're Running Out Of Antibiotics

Nicole Allan | The Atlantic | February 19, 2014

It’s difficult to imagine a world without antibiotics. [...] Yet in 1945, while accepting a Nobel Prize for discovering penicillin, Alexander Fleming warned of a future in which antibiotics had been used with abandon and bacteria had grown resistant to them. Today, this future is imminent. Read More »