Flesh-Eating Bacteria Mutation Now Spread By Sneezing And Handshakes
My bet for how civilization will end in 2012…The worst strains of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” have largely been found within hospitals, but the newest version can be contracted far more easily and is spreading through the streets in Britain and the United States, the Daily Mail reports:
A flesh-eating form of pneumonia that is easily passed between healthy people on public transport is spreading across the UK, experts have warned.
The deadly strain of MRSA called USA300 passes easily through skin-to-skin contact. It can also survive on surfaces and so has the potential to be picked up on crowded buses and tubes. It was first seen in the U.S but cases are now being reported in the community and not just hospitals in Britain.
USA300 is resistant to treatment by several front-line antibiotics and can cause large boils on the skin. In severe cases, USA300 can lead to fatal blood poisoning or a form of…
Tuberculosis Strain Totally Resistant To Antibiotics Spreads In India
Sputum sample containing Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Are we approaching the end of the wondrous age of antibiotics? Scientists have nothing to combat this strain of TB, as Eryn Brown reports for the LA Times:
At least a dozen people in India are infected with a type of tuberculosis that is resistant to all antibiotics used to treat the disease.
In December, the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases published an online report that documented four of the cases. This weekend, news outlets in India reported that there were actually at least 12 people with the drug-resistant lung disease.
Officials fear that what they’ve seen so far is just the beginning, and that many more cases are lurking undetected.
“It’s estimated that on average, a tuberculosis patient infects 10 to 20 contacts in a year, and there’s no reason to suspect that this strain is any less transmissible,” study co-author Zarir Udwadia of the Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research…
Fecal Matter Transplants Used to Cure Intestinal Infection
C. difficile colonies on a blood agar plate.
James Gallagher reports in BBC News
Transplanting faecal matter from one person to another — the thought might turn your stomach, but it could be lifesaving.
Some doctors are using the procedure to repopulate the gut with healthy bacteria, which can become unbalanced in some diseases. Dr Alisdair MacConnachie, who thinks he is the only UK doctor to carry out the procedure for Clostridium difficle infection, describes it as a proven treatment. He says it should be used, but only as a treatment of last resort.
The logic is simple. C. difficile infection is caused by antibiotics wiping out swathes of bacteria in the gut. It gives the surviving C. difficile bacteria room to explode in numbers and produce masses of toxins which lead to diarrhoea and can be fatal.
The first-choice solution, more antibiotics, does not always work and some patients develop recurrent infection. The theory…
UK Doctors Claim Gonorrhea Is ‘Drug Resistant’
The good ol’ days of penicillin …. Michelle Roberts reports for BBC News:
UK doctors are being told the antibiotic normally used to treat gonorrhoea is no longer effective because the sexually transmitted disease is now largely resistant to it. The Health Protection Agency says we may be heading to a point when the disease is incurable unless new treatments can be found.
For now, doctors must stop using the usual treatment cefixime and instead use two more powerful antibiotics. One is a pill and the other a jab.
The HPA say the change is necessary because of increasing resistance. Tests on samples taken from patients and grown in the laboratory showed reduced susceptibility to the usual antibiotic cefixime in nearly 20% of cases in 2010, compared with just 10% of cases in 2009.
Antibiotic Use Tied To Obesity, Diabetes, Allergies And Asthma
Karen Kaplan reports for the Los Angeles Times:
We’ve all heard that the overuse of antibiotics is making them less effective and fueling the rise of dangerous drug-resistant bacteria. But did you know it may also be fueling the rise of obesity, diabetes, allergies and asthma?
So says Dr. Martin Blaser, microbiologist and infectious disease specialist at New York University Langone Medical Center who studies the myriad bacteria that live on and in our bodies. He explains his theory in a commentary published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.
In recent years, scientists have developed a growing appreciation for the “microbiome,” the collection of mostly useful bacteria that help us digest food, metabolize key nutrients and ward off invading pathogens. Investigators have cataloged thousands of these organisms through the National Institutes of Health’s Human Microbiome Project, begun in 2008.
Blaser is interested in why so many bacteria have colonized the human body for so long – the simple fact that they…
Frightening ‘Super Gonorrhea’ Strain Emerges
It has been found in Japan, the country from which new strains have typically originated in the past. (Due to their love hotels?) It could go global in a decade, writes Reuters:
Scientists have found a “superbug” strain of gonorrhea in that is resistant to all antibiotics and say it could transform a once easily treatable infection into a global public health threat.
The new strain of the sexually transmitted disease — called H041 — cannot be killed by any currently recommended treatments for gonorrhea, leaving doctors with no other option than to try medicines so far untested against the disease.
Magnus Unemo of the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria, who discovered the strain with colleagues from Japan in samples from Kyoto, described it as both “alarming” and “predictable.”
In a telephone interview Unemo said the fact that the strain had been found first in Japan also followed an alarming pattern — “Japan…
The Dangers of Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics
Many doctors dispense Quinolones–such as Levaquin, Cipro and Aveloxl–as if they were Pez these days. Cipro, for example, is useful against Anthrax, but some doctors have been known to prescribe it for possible infections that haven’t even shown up in tests.
But fluoroquinolones are now known to researchers to sometimes cause tendinopathy, neuropathy, and other serious adverse effects. They work by preventing bacterial DNA from duplicating, and it seems they might sometimes harm human DNA as well.
So why haven’t the manufacturers told doctors about these risks? And why hasn’t the FDA ordered them to?
Cockroaches Contain Antibiotics To Treat MRSA & E-coli
New York City may be the breeding ground for the next antibiotic for superbugs. It’s good to see there may be a use for cockroaches besides creating an image of “dank and dingy hotels.” Daily Mail reports:
Cockroaches are usually seen as a health hazard, to be found in dank and dingy hotels.
But scientists believe that they could hold the secret to treating the most resilient of superbugs.
Tests have found tissue from the brains and nervous systems of the insects can kill off more than 90 per cent of MRSA and E-coli infections without harming human cells.
Simon Lee, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Nottingham, says they hold powerful antibiotic properties after discovering nine different molecules in their tissues which are toxic to bacteria.
He said: ‘We hope that these molecules could eventually be developed into treatments for E-coli and MRSA infections that are increasingly resistant to current drugs.
Continues at Daily Mail …
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Drug Resistant Indian Superbug Spreading
From Reuters:
A new superbug could spread around the world after reaching Britain from India — in part because of medical tourism — and scientists say there are almost no drugs to treat it.
Researchers said on Wednesday they had found a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain.
NDM-1 makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class called carbapenems, and experts say there are no new drugs on the horizon to tackle it.
With international travel in search of cheaper healthcare increasing, particularly for procedures such as cosmetic surgery, Timothy Walsh, who led the study, said he feared the new superbug could soon spread across the globe…
[continues at Reuters]
Norway Conquers Infections By Cutting Use of Antibiotics
Martha Mendoza and Margie Mason report on the AP via the Miami Herald:
OSLO, Norway — Aker University Hospital is a dingy place to heal. The floors are streaked and scratched. A light layer of dust coats the blood pressure monitors. A faint stench of urine and bleach wafts from a pile of soiled bedsheets dropped in a corner.
Look closer, however, at a microscopic level, and this place is pristine. There is no sign of a dangerous and contagious staph infection that killed tens of thousands of patients in the most sophisticated hospitals of Europe, North America and Asia last year, soaring virtually unchecked.
The reason: Norwegians stopped taking so many drugs.
Twenty-five years ago, Norwegians were also losing their lives to this bacteria. But Norway’s public health system fought back with an aggressive program that made it the most infection-free country in the world. A key part of that program was cutting…
Children Need More Dirt to be Healthy
E. Huff for Natural News:
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, have found that children who are too clean are at a higher risk of developing inflammation and disease. Normal skin bacteria that act to balance immune response protect the body from overreacting to cuts and other injuries. Excessive cleanliness is actually impairing children’s natural healing function and putting them at an increased risk for disease.
Published in the online edition of Nature Medicine, findings are confirming that germ exposure is beneficial to young children who need it in order to build immunity and prevent the onset of allergies. Being too clean is now implicated in causing increased allergies in developed countries around the world.
Staphylococci, the bacterial species studied by researchers, was found to play a vital role in blocking inflammation. It creates a molecule called lipoteichoic acid (LTA) that keeps skin keratinocytes balanced and prevents them from creating too…
Common Disinfectants Create Mutant Superbugs
Stephen Messenger writes on Treehunger:
The manufacturers of cleaning products have made a lot of money convincing people that they are under constant assault from harmful bacteria. We’ve been told that the only way to keep our families safe and ensure good health is to disinfect, disinfect, disinfect!
But, according to the latest research, all this superfluous disinfecting could be spawning mutant bacteria capable of resisting the strongest antibiotics. These superbugs have even the most unflappable of scientists doubling-up on their intensifiers:
“This is very, very worrying,” says one researcher.
The research conducted by the National University of Ireland tested the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which responsible for one out of every ten hospital-acquired infections. This strain is said to be “opportunistic” in that it typically affects those with immune systems already weakened.
A mutated strain of P. aeruginosa was observed developing a resistance to the common disinfectant benzalkonium chloride (BSK) with rapidly increasing tolerance. Eventually, the…
