Electron Microscopy and Fighting Superbugs

Last week, a bunch of news articles came out (like this one) that talk about how we are on track to figuring out new ways to tackle antibiotic resistant superbugs. The research they are referring to highlights a paper recently published in Nature (a closed access journal) by Changjiang Dong’s group at the University of East …

Blueprinting a New Antimicrobial

This recent news article discusses a new candidate antimicrobial called Globomycin and the work that researchers at  Trinity College Dublin have put in to map out its spatial organization. A particularly interesting point that is discussed is the idea of narrow-spectrum antibiotics. Antibiotic/antimicrobial resistance is driven in part by the fact that these drugs target a …

Antibiotic Resistance in Small-Scale Poultry Farming in Ecuador

mSphere, ASM’s new open access journal, published a paper recently called Antibiotic Resistance in Animal and Environmental Samples Associated with Small-Scale Poultry Farming in Northwestern Ecuador, written by Braykov et al. The abstract is as follows: The effects of animal agriculture on the spread of antibiotic resistance (AR) are cross-cutting and thus require a multidisciplinary perspective. …

A Rant About Inadequate Identification and Treatment of Bacterial Infections

For those of you who have an ear tuned to the media’s noise about germ this, bacteria that, this blog post may resonate with you. I was just reading this article recently published in Nature about B. pseudomallei, a bacteria that causes meliodosis. The authors found that the bacteria is more globally distributed than previously …

New Standards for Antibiotic Stewardship

The Joint Commission recently released new standards for antibiotic stewardship for field review. They aim to get more hospitals and institutions thinking about antibiotic stewardship programs and how their prescribing habits affect antibiotic resistance. Although it seems there may be opposition by some clinicians (as there always is with any change), hopefully antibiotic stewardship standards will become …

A Review on Antimicrobial Resistance in Horses

A review by Maddox et al came out earlier this year on antimicrobial resistance in horses. Livestock are a common source of antimicrobial resistance genes since so many antimicrobials are used on a regular basis to raise these animals. Too slowly, laws are coming into place restricting antimicrobial use in livestock so that only when animals are …

Jim O’Neill on “How to stop antibiotic resistance threatening global growth”

The G-20 would be an ideal forum in which to take international action against antimicrobial resistance, writes Jim O’Neill. This is definitely worth a read: How to stop antibiotic resistance threatening global growth Jim O’ Neill (who is the Commercial Secretary to the UK Treasury) writes about how the report from the G20 meeting in Antalya, …