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A new drug compound can recharge a class of antibiotics used to fight superbug bacteria, improving the antibiotics’ effectiveness 16-fold. It’s another volley on the part of humans in the ongoing battle between new drugs and bacterial resistance. This new compound doesn’t fight the bacteria itself — it just makes the antibacterial drugs more potent, and better able to fight the bacteria despite the bugs’ resistance. The compound, developed at North Carolina State University, could help researchers fight an emerging problem with a tricky bacterial enzyme. The enzyme is called New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase, or NDM-1, and it has been found...

TAU engineers an easy-to-use solution to make hospitals saferAccording to the World Health Organization, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are one of the top three threats to human health. Patients in hospitals are especially at risk, with almost 100,000 deaths due to infection every year in the U.S. alone. Now Dr. Udi Qimron of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine has developed an efficient and cost-effective liquid solution that can help fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria and keep more patients safe from life-threatening infections. The solution is based on specially designed bacteriophages — viruses that infect...

The Federal Government announced charges today against a ring of foreign corporations and executives who conspired to bring antibiotic-laden Chinese honey illegally into the US, in an attempt to avoid paying millions in fees. A federal grand jury in Chicago indicted top executives of German food conglomerate Alfred L Wolff GmbH, and several of its affiliated companies for allegedly importing more than $US40 million in Chinese honey, but saying it originated elsewhere in order to avoid paying duties of nearly $US80 million that were levied on Chinese honey.

Cryptococcus is a type of fungus that is found in the soil worldwide, usually in association with bird droppings. The two types of the fungus that causes illness in human are Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii, which has been isolated from eucalyptus trees in tropical and sub-tropical regions. It has also been found growing on the remains of the Chernobyl Nuclear plant, showing that it likes radiation The infection caused by the fungus may cause a pneumonia-like illness, with shortness of breath, coughing and fever. Skin lesions may also occur. Another common form of cryptococcosis is central nervous system infection,...

Drug waste creates highest disaster zone in Andhra 27 Jan 2009, 0233 hrs IST, MARGIE MASON, AP PATANCHERU: When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000. And it's not just ciprofloxacin. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. It is the highest...

Even metaphorical wars can have flesh-and-blood casualties, and hospitals around the country are now tending to the victims of one of our fiercest. It is not so much that we are “losing” this particular war; simple notions of victory and defeat dropped away some time ago. Rather, locked in a spiral of costly and controversial escalations, we may have lost sight of who the enemy actually is.

Source: Society of Chemical Industry Date: January 29, 2007 New Approach Could Lower Antibiotic Requirements By 50 Times Science Daily — Antibiotic doses could be reduced by up to 50 times using a new approach based on bacteriophages. Steven Hagens, previously at the University of Vienna, told Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI, that certain bacteriophages, a type of virus that infects bacteria, can boost the effectiveness of antibiotics gentamicin, gramacidin or tetracycline. It is the phages' ability to channel through bacterial cell membranes that boosts antibiotic effectiveness. 'Pseudomonas bacteria for example are particularly multi-resistant to antibiotics because...

The Antibiotic VitaminDeficiency in vitamin D may predispose people to infection Janet Raloff In April 2005, a virulent strain of influenza hit a maximum-security forensic psychiatric hospital for men that's midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. John J. Cannell, a psychiatrist there, observed with increasing curiosity as one infected ward after another was quarantined to limit the outbreak. Although 10 percent of the facility's 1,200 patients ultimately developed the flu's fever and debilitating muscle aches, none did in the ward that he supervised. WINTER WOES. Cold-weather wear and the sun's angle in the winter sky limit how much ultraviolet...

Unnatural success Aimee Cunningham Chemists report the first synthesis of a promising antibiotic that other researchers recently discovered in nature. With the recipe in hand, scientists can pursue modifications that might make the compound more effective. Earlier this year, a team from Merck Research Laboratories announced the discovery of platensimycin, a small molecule produced by the bacterium Streptomyces platensis (SN: 5/20/06, p. 307: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060520/fob1.asp). Platensimycin killed certain drug-resistant pathogens by disrupting their synthesis of fatty acids. After seeing that "exciting report," K. C. Nicolaou of Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., says, he and his colleagues devised a strategy...

Survey of bacteria reveals an array of antibiotic-resistance. Bacteria that live in soil have been found to harbour an astonishing armoury of natural weapons to fight off antibiotics. The discovery could help researchers anticipate the next wave of drug-resistant 'superbugs'. Researchers have long known that soil-dwelling bacteria make natural antibiotics, and that they have inbuilt ways to survive their own and other bugs' toxins; in some cases, the genes that help them dodge antibiotics have transferred into infectious bugs that plague humans. Microbiologists have identified a few of the ways that soil microbes neutralize antibiotics. But Gerard Wright and his...

For those who have been there, Hell Week is a sleepless, bitter cold, gritty, soaking wet, hell on earth where exhausted candidates – pumped full of antibiotics to ward off a variety of infections – survive on sheer heart, tenacity, seemingly incomprehensible physical courage, and about 5,000-7,000 calories per day (given they can muster enough strength to consume them). Hell Week is a short span of eternity at Coronado, California where the SEAL hopeful comes to a reckoning of the soul. Here, he “realizes,” according to Commander Richard Marcinko (USN, ret.), “the body is only tissue and the mind/brain can...

“Korea’s Infection Rate of Super Bacteria reached an alarming level” MARCH 28, 2005 23:05 by TK Sohn ( sohn@donga.com) On November 26, 2004, about 250 students were infected with dysentery after eating their school lunch at Gyohyeon Elementary School in Chungju City, Chungbuk Province. Hospital administered a “third-generation cephalosporin antibiotic” on the students, but strangely enough, it didn’t work. The hospital immediately gave another antibiotic, ciprofloxacin, to the students and only managed to treat the dysentery. The National Public Health Research Institute tested the resistant genes of 267 AIDS patients who didn’t receive treatments and of the 45 AIDS patient...

The legacy of Fleming - 50 years on By Nick Triggle BBC News health reporter Concern about hospital infections such as MRSA is one of the most controversial issues in today's NHS. About 5,000 people die from such infections out of the many millions who go into hospitals each year. But 70 years ago, the situation was much worse. People could often die from a sore throat if the infection spread to the lungs. And pneumonia and post-operative infections killed one in three of those who got them. Within a decade that figure had dropped to just a few per...

Scientists have found a ''molecular Achilles heel'' in the organism that causes pneumonia, providing a target for the development of a new class of antibiotics that could eventually eradicate the disease. ''Streptococcus pneumoniae places an enormous burden on the welfare of humanity,'' says Thomas Leyh, Ph.D., a professor of biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and lead author of the paper. ''Worldwide, the organism takes the lives of some 3,700 people daily, the majority of whom are children below the age of five.'' From American Chemical Society: New antibiotic target could mean the end of...

A widely used antibiotic long considered safe dramatically increases the risk of cardiac arrest, particularly when taken with some popular drugs for infections and high blood pressure, a huge study found.The drug is erythromycin, which has been on the market for 50 years and is prescribed for everything from strep throat to syphilis. The new study shows the need for continuing research on the safety of older medicines, including how they interact with newer drugs, said researcher Wayne A. Ray, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.In patients taking erythromycin along with other drugs...

Syphilis Becoming Resistant to Oral Antibiotic By Megan Rauscher NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Some strains of the bacterium that causes syphilis have developed a mutation that makes them resistant to Zithromax (known generically as azithromycin), doctors warn in this week's New England Journal of Medicine "This is important because an increasing number of physicians are azithromycin using for treatment of patients with syphilis and for sexual contacts," Dr. Sheila A. Lukehart, from Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, told Reuters Health. The recommended treatment for syphilis is penicillin, to which there is currently no evidence of resistance. "However, penicillin injections...

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - With "superbugs" stalking hospitals and old killers such as tuberculosis re-emerging, the world badly needs more powerful antibiotics. Yet the pipeline of new treatments is drying up as drugmakers -- citing poor financial returns -- focus instead on chronic conditions, such as high cholesterol, where medicines are taken for years rather than curing patients in one or two weeks. The shrinking of the medical armory is a growing worry for health care officials and has sparked a debate between regulators and pharmaceutical companies over ways to kick-start investment. "The relative lack of research on anti-microbials is...

Life, Garlic, and the Pursuit of Healthiness By Gailon TotherohCBN News Health & Science ReporterGarlic can reduce cholesterol as much as 12 percent. For a person with cholesterol at 230, that could mean a decrease to a near normal level of 202 CBN.com – Garlic and similar vegetables may be the reason Chinese men have so little prostate cancer, according to a new study from the National Cancer Institute. Yet there are many contradictory reports on whether garlic supplements have health benefits. Certainly history is full of garlic's medicinal use. And the latest research developments indicate garlic's active ingredient may...