antibiotic-resistant bacteria

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Green America Campaign Targets Starbucks Over GMO Milk

Staff Writer | Sustainable Pulse | March 4, 2014

Green America’s GMO Inside campaign today launched a major push to get Starbucks, America’s largest coffee chain with more than 20,000 stores in 62 countries, to serve only organic milk sourced from cows not fed GMOs.

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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 »

How Hospitals, Nursing Homes Keep Lethal ‘Superbug’ Outbreaks Secret

Deborah J. Nelson, David Rohde, Benjamin Lesser and Ryan McNeill | Reuters Investigates | December 22, 2016

The outbreak started in January 2014. That’s when a resident of the Casa Maria nursing home here was diagnosed with Clostridium difficile, a highly contagious and potentially deadly “superbug” that plagues hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities. By the end of February, six more Casa Maria residents were suffering from the infection, characterized by fever, abdominal cramps and violent diarrhea...

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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 Mandated Reporting Set Infection Rates On The Decline

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | December 17, 2013

Six years after the New York Department of Health started publishing hospital-acquired infection data as part of a public transparency agenda, the rates of most infections are trending downward. Read More »

How Superbugs Hitch A Ride From Hog Farms Into Your Community

Tom Philpott | Mother Jones | September 13, 2014

Factory-scale farms don't just house hundreds of genetically similar animals in tight quarters over vast cesspools collecting their waste...And when you dose the animals daily with small amounts of antibiotics—a common practice—the bacteria strains in these vast germ reservoirs quite naturally develop the ability to withstand anti-bacterial treatments...

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Increase In Use Of Livestock Antibiotics Linked To Superbugs. . .Again

Press Release | University of Texas , U.S Food and Drug Administration | October 6, 2014

Two reports released last week add to the growing concerns surrounding the overuse of antibiotics in livestock and the corresponding public health and safety impacts of increases in antibiotic-resistant bacteria, known as superbugs...

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Killing Superbugs with Star-Shaped Polymers, not Antibiotics

Press Release | Bio21 Institute, The University of Melbourne | September 13, 2016

Tiny, star-shaped molecules are effective at killing bacteria that can no longer be killed by current antibiotics, new research shows. The study, published today in Nature Microbiology, holds promise for a new treatment method against antibiotic-resistant bacteria (commonly known as superbugs). The star-shaped structures, are short chains of proteins called ‘peptide polymers’, and were created by a team from the Melbourne School of Engineering...

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Livestock Workers May Carry Staph Bacteria From Pigs

Megan Gannon | LiveScience | September 17, 2014

Workers who handle livestock may carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their noses after they leave the farm.  A small study of hog workers in North Carolina found that many carried staph bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus) and some carried drug-resistant strains of the bug, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA...

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Medical Devices Linked to Outbreaks of Superbug Infections

Victoria Colliver | SF Gate | January 13, 2016

More patients than previously reported have needlessly been infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria in recent years because of problems linked to a type of medical scope, according to a U.S. Senate health committee report released Wednesday. The report, which was critical of federal oversight of the devices, cited 25 outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant infections at 19 U.S. hospitals, including two centers in Los Angeles, and six in Europe...

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More Hospitals Are Ditching Antibiotics In The Meat They Serve

Eliza Barclay | NPR | January 12, 2016

Concern about the livestock industry's overuse of antibiotics has led a number of health care institutions to start choosing meat from animals raised without antibiotics whenever they can. According to Practice Greenhealth, a nonprofit that's helping the health care industry on this issue, more than 400 U.S. hospitals are working toward a goal of making 20 percent of their meat purchases "antibiotic-free." And around a dozen hospitals have already switched the majority of their chicken purchases to "antibiotic-free." And around a dozen hospitals have already switched the majority of their chicken purchases to antibiotic-free.

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New Antibiotic Alternative Traps and Eats Bacterial Toxins

BEC Crew | Science Alert | November 6, 2014

Researches in Switzerland have come up with what could be a viable alternative to antibiotics - cell structures called liposomes that can bait, trap and neutralise deadly bacterial toxins. As much trouble as we seem to be in right now due to the creeping issue of antibiotic resistance, imagine what the world would've looked like if the first antibiotic - penicillin - wasn’t discovered almost 90 years ago. We owe a great deal to this fungi-derived wonder-drug, but our absolute reliance on it has now put us at risk...

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New Light-Activated Nanoparticles Kill Over 90% of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Peter Dockrill | Science Alert | January 19, 2016

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a growing problem around the world, responsible for some 2 million infections in the US each year that lead to approximately 23,000 deaths. But a new nanoparticle treatment developed by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder could provide an effective means of fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria including Salmonella, E. Coli, and Staphylococcus, based on results in a laboratory environment. In testing with a lab-grown culture, the nanoparticles killed 92 percent of drug-resistant bacterial cells while leaving the other cells intact...

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Other Resource 530 Chefs Call On White House To End Antibiotic Overuse On Industrial Farms

Staff Writer | Pew | September 27, 2013

This week, The Pew Charitable Trusts delivered a letter signed by 530 chefs (PDF) to Sam Kass, executive director of Let’s Move! and senior policy advisor for nutrition at the White House, urging the Obama administration to finalize policies to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics and to protect people from resistant superbugs. Read More »

Predicting Antibiotic Resistance

Press Release | RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center | December 17, 2014

Treating bacterial infections with antibiotics is becoming increasingly difficult as bacteria develop resistance not only to the antibiotics being used against them, but also to ones they have never encountered before. By analyzing genetic and phenotypic changes in antibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli, researchers at the RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center (QBiC) in Japan have revealed a common set of features that appear to be responsible for the development of resistance to several types of antibiotics...

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