infectious disease
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Predicting Antibiotic Resistance
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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Predicting Superbugs' Countermoves To New Drugs
Duke University researchers used software they developed to predict a constantly-evolving infectious bacterium's countermoves to one of these new drugs ahead of time, before the drug is even tested on patients. In a study appearing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team used their program to identify the genetic changes that will allow methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, to develop resistance to a class of new experimental drugs that show promise against the deadly bug.
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Researchers To Investigate If Farming Practices Are Increasing Antibiotic Resistant Superbugs
Projects to track antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the livestock sector are being conducted by researchers at Colorado State University in the United States...
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RNRN Launches Fundraising Drive For Healthcare Workers In Ebola-Stricken Nations
The Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), a project of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest professional organization of RNs, has initiated a national fundraising campaign to provide desperately needed personal protective equipment for frontline healthcare workers caring for patients stricken by the Ebola virus...
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Safety Foul-Up Exposes CDC Staff To Anthrax
A breakdown in safety procedures has exposed 84 CDC staffers in Atlanta to live anthrax, the agency said....
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Science, Society And Risk In The Anthropocene
The culture of too much hygiene in rapid, unplanned urbanising society with poor infrastructure exposes urban spaces to a particular risk brought about by unchecked use of technology. This article looks at the indiscriminate use of antibiotics and antibacterial consumer products, which form the aetiology for the emergence of new strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria (superbugs) in urban space, especially in waterbodies...
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Slow Ebola Response Blamed On False Assumptions About Its Course
Health experts and humanitarian organizations waging war against the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa hope plans announced Tuesday by the Obama Administration to send additional aid to affected regions will encourage more philanthropic support and health worker recruitment. Both money and volunteers have come in at a slower pace in this crisis than in past disasters...
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Some U.S. Hospitals Weigh Withholding Care To Ebola Patients
The Ebola crisis is forcing the American healthcare system to consider the previously unthinkable: withholding some medical interventions because they are too dangerous to doctors and nurses and unlikely to help a patient. U.S. hospitals have over the years come under criticism for undertaking measures that prolong dying rather than improve patients' quality of life...
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Study Finds That Up To Half Of Antibiotics Fail Due To 'Superbugs'
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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Superbugs Spread Across U.S.
As Americans worry about Ebola, the swiftly spreading virus that has traveled from West Africa to Texas, a more silent killer poses a greater danger...Drug-resistant bacteria killed 23,000 people in America last year and caused 2 million illnesses...
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Superbugs: Resistance Isn't Futile But A New Generation Of Antibiotics Is Needed
Not so super, really, but powerful enough to withstand much of what modern medicine has thrown at [superbugs]. That's why David Cameron is calling for a global response to tackle the problem...
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Tech’s Role In Fighting The Ebola Outbreak
...The U.S. government is eyeing body sensors, ruggedized tablet computers, broadband communications and big data capabilities to aid its Ebola response. A high priority on the list is using innovative technologies to improve the protective gear worn by healthcare workers on the frontlines...
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The $.30 Kit That Could End Malaria
It's an entirely preventable disease, and when diagnosed early, it's easily treatable. Yet Malaria still claims hundreds of thousands of lives each year...
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The Grim Future If Ebola Goes Global
If you listened hard over the weekend to the chatter around the political theater of detaining a nurse returning from the Ebola zone in a tent with no heat or running water, you might have heard a larger concern expressed. It was this: What happens if this kind of punitive detention — which went far beyond what medical authorities recommend — deters aid workers from going to West Africa to help?...
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The Underreported Side Of The Ebola Crisis
Amid the media accounts of the worst Ebola outbreak ever recorded some significant context is largely missing from the major media reporting. Atop this list are links of the outbreak to the climate crisis and global inequality, mal-distribution of wealth, and austerity-driven cuts in public services that have greatly contributed to the rapid spread of Ebola...
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