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The mixture of honey and vinegar, also known as oxymel, has been used as a medical treatment throughout history and now scientists have established that this combination could have modern applications. Bacterial infections can be difficult to treat, particularly when they are protected within a biofilm. A biofilm is a complex system of bacteria which can attach tightly to surfaces, like flesh in a wound infection. Bacteria which are protected in a biofilm are difficult to kill, and treatments today are not always effective at removing them. Doctors have utilized this information in medicine today. While they use manuka honey...

In the early 2000s, hospitals across Australia began installing more hand-sanitizer dispensers in their rooms and hallways for staff, visitors and patients to use. Research showed these alcohol-based disinfectants helped battle staph infections in patients and certain kinds of drug-resistant bacteria. And rates of these infections went down. But other infections didn't drop when people started using the sanitizer stations. In fact, certain infections went up. In particular, enterococcal infections — caused by bacteria that affect the digestive tract, bladder, heart and other parts of the body — started increasing. This wasn't only happening in Australia. Countries around the world...

A report today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a small outbreak of carbapenemase-producing carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CP-CRE) at a Kentucky hospital in 2016 highlights multiple introduction of the worrisome pathogen in a rural facility and demonstrates the possible role of cleaning equipment. The investigation by physicians and epidemiologists from the CDC and the Kentucky Department of Health, appearing today in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), describes an outbreak that started on Aug 11, 2016, when two Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)-producing isolates from clinical cultures were reported from patients in a small community hospital...