Antibiotic resistance

Ho ho ho, and welcome to the early Christmas edition of Animalcules. Sit back, grab some hot cocoa, and click below to open your Christmas gift of some of the most interesting microbiology-themed blog posts over the past month. To start us off with, in a new blog to me (the Cornell Mushroom blog), we learn how a fungus assists in the transmission of a nematode from the environment to the host--in this case, cattle. It's a fascinating example of commensalism. From the same blog comes another post on Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (or Bd), a fungus which is a cause of skin infections in…
Drug-Resistant TB in South Africa Draws Attention From U.N. The World Health Organization will hold an urgent meeting this week to seek ways to deal with deadly strains of tuberculosis that are virtually untreatable with standard drugs. The meeting, in Johannesburg on Thursday and Friday, comes in response to recent reports from a number of the world's regions about a small but growing number of cases of the deadly strains, known as extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. "XDR-TB poses a grave public health threat, especially in populations with high rates of H.I.V." and few health…
I blogged previously on the potential of bacteriophage, viruses that infect--and often kill--bacteria, in treating bacterial infections that are resistant to our current antibiotics. This is an area that's really just opening up, and while there is a lot of promise, there are also a significant number of obstacles. One thing I didn't mention, however, was the potential of bacteriophage for other public health measures--such as a bacteriocidal food additive. (More below) A mix of bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat common microbes…
More interesting stories that I didn't get to this week... Ewen is looking for volunteer producers for his radio show. If you're in his neck of the woods and would like to learn about science journalism, drop him a line. Mike notes that MRSA is winning the war on drugs, due in part to dirty needles and a lack of needle exchange programs. Orac discusses the latest Geiers drama (those would be the folks who've been most prominent in pushing the vaccination/autism link here in the U.S.) Turns out a court recently laid the smackdown on them, Kitzmiller-style. More sequence information has been…
I have an admission. I am tattooed. Twice. A small thing, but it's pretty incredible at the visceral reactions I sometime receive when people find out. (They're not in oft-seen areas under normal attire, but neither are they anywhere "naughty.") I get head shakes and tongue-clucks from many of my elders; nose crinkles from folks of my own generation who simply think tattoos are unattractive (either on anyone, or on women specifically), or compliments from people who are inked themselves. I understand the range of reactions and hey, to each their own--I'm all for diversity of opinion.…
Antibiotic resistance gets a lot of attention, but it's not the only kind of drug resistance that's of concern. Derek of In the Pipeline has a post up discussing resistance to cancer therapies.
Welcome to the new edition of Animalcules! First, a few housekeeping notes. If you note the schedule, I've not yet extended it beyond June 1st. I think that, at least for the summer months, Animalcules will be a once-monthly carnival, rather than every other week. If things pick up after that, I'll change it back to the current set-up, but that will be dependent not only on entries but also on additional hosts. So, if you'd like to host in July, August, or September, drop me a line (aetiology AT gmail DOT com) an I'll get you on the schedule. Okay...on to the entries! We have a few…
On a recent episode of the drama House, the medical team finds that a patient improves from his illness when he's infected with a particular species of bacteria, Legionella pneumophila. Though mysterious at the time because the cause of the patient's illness was unknown, it was later determined that the patient was infected with naegleria, an amoeba. Legionella is an intracellular bacterium that just happens to naturally live in amoeba. Therefore, when the patient was co-infected with the amoeba and Legionella, the Legionella killed off the amoeba--using one microbe to attack another.…
Just a few things that have either been sitting in my drafts box and I know I won't have a chance to get to, or stuff I saw elsewhere that deserves a mention. Check out this excellent (and hilarious) post by Skip Evans on creationists and boobies. I've posted previously here about our eagles here in Iowa. Phil at the Bad Astronomy Blog gives links to 2 webcams, where you can watch the nests of eagles or peregrine falcons (another favorite bird of mine). They've shut down the eagle one because the eggs didn't hatch and the parents left the nest, but there's a fluffy white falcon chick (…
Part One: Introduction to Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Part Two: Introduction to Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses continued Part Three: Bushmeat Part Four: War and Disease Part Five: Chikungunya Part Six: Avian influenza Part Seven: Reporting on emerging diseases Part Eight: Disease and Domesticated Animals Part Nine: The Emergence of Nipah Virus Part Ten: Monkeypox Part Eleven: Streptococcus suis Part Twelve: Salmonella and fish Part Thirteen: new swine influenza virus detected Part Fourteen: dog flu strikes Wyoming. Part Fifteen: Clostridium species. Part Sixteen:…
The Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) has released a list of the six drug-resistant pathogens scientists should be most concerned about. The AATF (Antimicrobial Availability Task Force) created a list of high-priority bacterial and fungal pathogens on the basis of ⩾1 of the following characteristics: current clinical and/or public health concern in the United States because of a high incidence of infection and substantial morbidity; infection with high attributable mortality rates, even if the population-based incidence is low (e.g., the majority of infections occur in…
I'm swamped today, so alas, nothing new from me. However, since many of you are newer readers, I thought I'd totally cheat and dig up one from the archives on antimicrobial resistance. This one I cross-posted to Panda's Thumb where it received some decent discussion; it was also mentioned in a write-up of Panda's Thumb featured in Science magazine. I also find it very fitting since we have a number of commenters discussing a number of things microbes "can't" do, as the post tells the story of one scientist who made a similar comment, was taken up on that, and proven wrong. Resistance…
Mike the Mad Biologist has some worrisome new findings on Acinetobacter, an emerging bacterial pathogen that has cropped up in the Middle East and Mexico. Mike discusses a new study on Acinetobacter genomics, showing that it has an island with 45 resistance genes, and that it's resistant to damn near everything. Just what we need--more "superbugs." Antibiotic resistance, Acinetobacter
I should request other people write my posts more often! Back in November, I wrote a post about a novel type of antibiotics made from naturally occuring antimicrobial peptides that are produced by a wide variety of organisms, including humans. In that post, I referenced something called "phage therapy," which is another somewhat "outside of the box" idea for treating bacterial infections. Now, Mike the Mad Biologist has an excellent post providing more information on phage therapy and its possibility as another potential weapon in our antibiotic arsenal: "Phage therapy" is short for…
NHANES is an abbreviation that's quite familiar to epidemiologists of all stripes: the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This survey dates back to 1956 with the passage of the National Health Survey Act, providing legislative authorization for "a continuing survey to provide current statistical data on the amount, distribution, and effects of illness and disability in the United States." Generally, information from these surveys has been used to look at the effect of nutrition, particularly micronutrients, on the health status of the population, or subgroups within the…
Resistance to antibiotics has been a concern of scientists almost since their widespread use began. In a 1945 interview with the New York Times, Alexander Fleming himself warned that the misuse of penicillin could lead to selection of resistant forms of bacteria, and indeed, he’d already derived such strains in the lab by varying doses of penicillin the bacteria were subjected to. A short 5 years later, several hospitals had reported that a majority of their Staph isolates were, as predicted, resistant to penicillin. This decline in effectiveness has led to a search for new sources and kinds…