Antibiotics
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Modern Medicine May Not Be Doing Your Microbiome Any Favors
There are lots of theories about why food allergies, asthma, celiac disease and intestinal disorders like Crohn's disease have been on the rise. Dr. Martin Blaser speculates that it may be connected to the overuse of antibiotics, which has resulted in killing off strains of bacteria that typically live in the gut. Read More »
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Modified Maggots Could Help Human Wound Healing
In a proof-of-concept study, NC State University researchers show that genetically engineered green bottle fly (Lucilia sericata) larvae can produce and secrete a human growth factor - a molecule that helps promote cell growth and wound healing. Sterile, lab-raised green bottle fly larvae are used for maggot debridement therapy (MDT), in which maggots are applied to non-healing wounds, especially diabetic foot ulcers, to promote healing. Maggots clean the wound, remove dead tissue and secrete anti-microbial factors. The treatment is cost-effective and approved by the Food and Drug Administration...
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Nanopillars Help Orthopaedic Implants Resist Infection
Inspired by insect wings that kill bacteria on contact, Indian researchers have developed a method to treat the surface of titanium orthopaedic implants at nano-scales so that they resist bacterial infection — a complication that often develops following surgery. Orthopaedic implants like hip joints, knee joints, plates and screws can be treated to resist bacteria without the use of antibiotics, says a paper published online in Scientific Reports...
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New Alliance to Drive and Measure Industry Progress to Curb Antimicrobial Resistance
Speaking at the B20 Health Conference in Berlin, IFPMA Director-General Thomas Cueni announced the launch of the AMR Industry Alliance, which will help give impetus to the life-sciences industry efforts to curb antimicrobial resistance. The threat of antimicrobial resistance causing drug-resistant infections is now more urgent than ever. It is estimated that, unless action is taken, the burden of deaths from antimicrobial resistance could be as high as 10 million lives each year by 2050 – more than cancer...
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Open Source Pharma And Prizes
I’m involved in a meeting happening next month in Italy that is asking “Can we develop a new open source pharmaceutical industry?” We’ll be talking amongst other things about incentives (such as prizes) and new ideas for the structure of pharma (legal and economic) and trying to come up with some pilot projects.
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Other Resource 530 Chefs Call On White House To End Antibiotic Overuse On Industrial Farms
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 »
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Re-Examining The FDA Antibiotics Decision: Banning Growth Promoters Won’t Be Enough
In my first take on the news of the FDA finalizing its request to agriculture to stop using growth-promoter antibiotics, I promised to come back for a more thoughtful reaction. And then this happened, and this happened, and the holidays happened, and, well, it’s been a busy few weeks. Read More »
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Record-High Antibiotic Sales For Meat And Poultry Production
The same antibiotics used to treat sick people are also given to healthy animals — in much greater numbers — to make them grow faster and to compensate for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. [...] Read More »
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Report: FDA Documents Show Decade Of Unsuccessful Attempts To Control Farm Antibiotics
A nonprofit group that has been using the courts to pressure the Food and Drug Administration into exerting more control over farm antibiotic overuse has done a deep review of FDA documents prised loose through Freedom of Information Act requests — and concludes that by allowing the drugs to remain on the market as formulated, the agency isn’t meeting its own internal safety standards. Read More »
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Rise Of Superbugs Threatens Antibiotic Crisis
Lethal drug-resistant organisms mean threat must be listed on register of civil emergencies, says chief medical officer Read More »
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Self-Experimenting Scientist Receives uBiome Grant to Investigate Consequences of Long-Term Antibiotic Use for Skin Conditions
uBiome, the leader in microbial genomics, has awarded a scientific grant to Dr. Eon Rios of Stanford University School of Medicine, supporting an investigation into how long-term use of oral antibiotics for skin conditions affects the gut microbiome. Microbial genomics leader uBiome, is awarding an ongoing series of in-kind scientific grants to ground-breaking microbiome studies. Its most recent microbiome impact grant award has been made to Dr. Eon Rios of Stanford University School of Medicine, who will study the effect of long-term use of oral antibiotics, prescribed for skin conditions, on the gut microbiome...
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Serious Resistant Infections Increasingly Found In Children
Here’s some disturbing news published late last week in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society by a team of researchers from two Chicago medical institutions plus an expert analyst of antibiotic resistance: Serious drug-resistant infections in children are rising across the United States. [...] Read More »
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She’s Got a Radical Approach for the Age of Superbugs: Don’t Fight Infections. Learn to Live with Them
As her father lay dying of sepsis, Janelle Ayres spent nine agonizing days at his bedside. When he didn’t beat the virulent bloodstream infection, she grieved. And then she got frustrated. She knew there had to be a better way to help patients like her dad. In fact, she was working on one in her lab. Ayres, a hard-charging physiologist who has unapologetically decorated her lab with bright touches of hot pink, is intent on upending our most fundamental understanding of how the human body fights disease...
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Shutdown Salmonella Outbreak Continues. CDC Food Safety Chief: ‘We Have A Blind Spot.’
We’re 11 days now into the federal shutdown and four days since the announcement of a major foodborne outbreak in chicken that is challenging the shutdown-limited abilities of the food-safety and disease-detective personnel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture. Here’s an update. Read More »
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Sneak Peek: What The White House Is Thinking About Antibiotic Resistance
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST for short) is preparing a major report on the problem of antibiotic resistance. The report won’t be published for a few months, but today PCAST held one of its periodic meetings, and aired what it thinks the most important issues are going to be. [...] Read More »
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