Marilyn Roberts explains about antibiotics in animal feed
Antibiotics in animal feed encourages drug-resistant bacteria
I HAVE spent my professional life discovering how disease-causing bacteria resist antibiotic treatment. The public should understand that antibiotics can treat bacterial infections, but not viruses, and the full prescription must be taken. Everyone using antibiotics shares the responsibility for increased bacterial resistance, so they must also take a role in using these important resources responsibly.
Yet drug-resistant bacteria emerge not only because people take the drugs, but also from the drugs’ use in agriculture. Worldwide, the livestock industry con...
Source: PharmaGossip - April 21, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Nanosponges Absorb Pore-forming Toxins from Snakes and Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (w/video)
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a nanosponge, a small particle that acts as a decoy for a wide variety of toxins that create pores in the cell membrane. This includes toxins produced by bacteria such as MRSA and E. coli, poisonous snakes, sea anemones, scorpions and bees. Unlike most other antitoxins, the nanosponges work regardless of the molecular structure of the toxin and thus do not need to be custom synthesized for individual toxins.Pore-forming toxins create pores in the cell membrane (with red blood cells being a prime target), disrupting the normal tight regulation of the pass...
Source: Medgadget - April 16, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Wouter Stomp Tags: Medicine Nanomedicine Source Type: blogs
Cell-Nanoparticle Hybrids, an Illustration of What is to Come
Work on nanoparticles and artificial cell structures for use in medicine is becoming more sophisticated. There is an emerging generation of simple but effective medical micro- and nanomachines, devices that will be manufactured in their millions and infused into the body to perform useful tasks, such as killing specific cells, or delivering specific signals to cells to cause them to regenerate more effectively, or clearing out unwanted metabolic byproducts that contribute to aging. A lot of interesting projects are presently underway, and this article is a good illustration of one branch of this work and its utility:
Nano...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 16, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Pseudomonas aeruginosa Efflux Pumps
from Keith Poole writing in Microbial Efflux Pumps: Current Research:Antibiotic efflux systems are common in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, with chromosomally-encoded multidrug efflux systems of the Resistance Nodulation Division (RND) family, specifically MexAB-OprM, MexCD-OprJ, MexEF-OprN and MexXY-OprM, of particular importance in clinical settings. Despite the broad substrate specificity of many of these, their clinical importance is limited to fluoroquinolone resistance (MexAB-OprM, MexCD-OprJ and MexEF-OprN), β-lactam resistance (MexAB-OprM, MexXY-OprM) and aminoglycoside resistance (MexXY-OprM). Expression of these sy...
Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists. - April 2, 2013 Category: Microbiology Source Type: blogs
Is Organic Food Really Different?
A 2012 analysis estimates that today’s children age 0-5 in the US have lost more than 16 million IQ points from exposure to organophosphate pesticides. They’re exposed to these pesticides almost entirely from our food.
Organic foods are grown without the use of toxic synthetic pesticides, antibiotics, artificial hormones, or genetic engineering. They depend on cultivating healthy soil to grow healthy plants to produce healthy animals.
But not long ago, headlines blared that a new study had found that organic food isn’t any healthier. Let’s look behind the headlines, causing many parents to wonder whether organic wa...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - March 7, 2013 Category: Child Development Authors: Dr. Alan Greene Tags: Dr. Greene's Blog Eating Organic Environmental Health Impact of Organics Nutrition Top Blog Top Organic Toxins Source Type: blogs
Day 1 of the 13th Bangladesh Society of Medicine Congress
Many friends and family want to know what is happening here in Bangladesh. This newspaper article seems quite accurate - Bangladesh death sentence sparks deadly protests
These paragraphs resonate with what many physicians have explained -
Michael Kugelman, south Asia expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre, Washington, also warned against comparisons with the Arab spring. "In Eypt and elsewhere it was all about movements to bring democratic change. Bangladesh already has democracy, however flawed," he said. A general election is likely later this year.
Kugelman added however that &qu...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - March 2, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: rcentor Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs
A Fight Over Antibiotics In Food-Producing Animals
As a US Senate committee holds a hearing today on renewing the Animal Drug User Fee Act, a coalition of three dozen advocacy groups is urging committee members to strengthen the law so that antibiotics given food-producing livestock do not create human resistance to the medicines. The effort comes just as two members of Congress introduced a bill to require better data on the use of antibiotics given to animals raised for human consumption.
At issue is inappropriate or overuse of antibiotics, which advocates argue is contributing to a public health crisis. They contend the FDA should increase its oversight, which last summ...
Source: Pharmalot - February 27, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Ed Silverman Tags: Uncategorized Antibiotic Resistance Antibiotics Eli Lilly Merck Pew Charitbale Trusts Pfizer Source Type: blogs
The young and healthy can die from influenza complications
Nothing was helping. Everything had been tried for a week of the most intensive critical care possible. A twenty year old man, completely healthy only two weeks previously, was holding on to life by a mere thread and nothing and no one could stop his dying.His battle had been lost against MRSA pneumonia precipitated by a brief influenza-like illness. Despite aggressive hemodynamic, antibiotic and ventilator management, he was becoming more hypoxic, his lungs collapsing and his renal function deteriorating. He had remained unresponsive during his ICU ordeal due to intentional sedation.Continue reading ... Manage...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - February 20, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Tags: Conditions Infectious disease Source Type: blogs
My Dad on Exercise
Bullseye has walked four to six miles for exercise almost every day, for 25 years. When home, he’ll walk the same route around the neighborhood or on the treadmill if the weather is poor. He’ll also walk the same route when he’s on vacation at the beach (at the same hotel every year). At the last job he held for over 30 years, he walked the same blocks, or the same hallways if the weather was poor.
Despite spending more time in Washington, D.C., than almost any other location throughout his life, he couldn’t tell me about his surroundings, where landmarks are, or how to get anywhere. “What do I care where you y...
Source: I've Still Got Both My Nuts: A True Cancer Blog - February 17, 2013 Category: Cancer Tags: family Source Type: blogs
Healthcare Update — 02-11-2013
Patients gone wild. Also, a perfect example of why doctors shouldn’t play security guard. Iowa man attempts to leave emergency department, doctor doesn’t allow him to do so. Patient then slams doctor against wall and puts doctor into a choke hold before being pulled off and restrained.
Who gets paid to study this stuff? “Researchers” find that number of ED visits for pubic hair grooming injuries is on the rise. I had a couple of snarky comments, but I’ll have to leave those to you all.
Possible hope in battling drug-resistant superbugs? Scientists discover how to manipulate genes in bacteria to prevent bacteria f...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - February 11, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: WhiteCoat Tags: Healthcare Update Source Type: blogs
Death by Infection, the End of Modern Medicine
A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child’s scratched knee could once again kill.
~ Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization
Alzheimer's Reading Room
In its recent annual report on global risks, the World Economic Forum (WEF) concluded that “arguably the greatest risk . . . to human health comes in the form of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. We live in a bacterial world where we will never be able to stay ahead of the mutation curve. A test of our resilience is how far behind the curve we allow ourselves t...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - February 10, 2013 Category: Dementia Authors: Bob DeMarco Source Type: blogs
Healthcare Update — 02-04-2013
Chinese man runs out of money to pay for dialysis. Government “insurance” only pays half the costs of treatment (keep that in mind, Affordable Care Act supporters). Then human ingenuity kicks in.
The man builds himself a dialysis machine out of used and discarded medical equipment, mixes his own dialysis fluid, and has been dialyzing himself … and it has been keeping him alive for 13 years.
Doctors hearing about his unorthodox methods warned him about the risk of serious infection and “long-term complications” because he wasn’t using sterile water to make his dialysis fluid. Something tells me that if the compl...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - February 4, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: WhiteCoat Tags: Healthcare Update Source Type: blogs
IBM will save the planet with this magical hydrogel - NOT
Well, press releases can drive me crazy. And this one is one of the worst I have seen in a while: IBM News room - 2013-01-24 IBM and The Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology Develop New Antimicrobial Hydrogel to Fight Superbugs and Drug-Resistant Biofilms - United States
This new fangled gel they have made they are very proud of. That is good. Pride in ones work is a good thing. But getting the science wrong and making misleading statements is not. Some statements I have issues with include
Able to colonize on almost any tissue or surface, microbial biofilms - which are adhes...
Source: The Tree of Life - January 26, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs
The Morning Flap: January 24, 2013
California Senator Dianne Feinstein
These are my links for January 23rd through January 24th:
Feinstein, Conn. Senators Set To Propose Assault Weapons Ban – Connecticut’s two U.S. senators are joining forces with California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other key senators, proposing a retooled federal ban on assault weapons in the wake of the deadly Newtown school shooting.Sen. Richard Blumenthal told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the proposed legislation, to be unveiled Thursday in Washington, D.C., will more narrowly define what’s considered an assault weapon under a resurrected ban. The bill, he said, wi...
Source: FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog - January 24, 2013 Category: Dentists Authors: Flap Tags: Pinboard Links The Morning Flap #tcot bipartisan Boehner Business Delicious Links Democrats Durbin Feinstein Filibuster GOP Government Guns Hillary_Clinton jobs KXL4jobs Libya Limbaugh Mackey McConnell Obama Oba Source Type: blogs
We cannot be complacent about drug resistant bacteria
This little cartoon, courtesy of xkcd, highlights a problem we have had for some time, but which is getting worse–highly antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Soon after the first antibiotics appeared, especially penicillin, doctors noticed the phenomenon of developing bacterial resistance to them. The cause is evolution in action. The replication time for bacteria is extremely fast, as short as twenty minutes in some cases. So the process of evolution, of random mutation and passing new traits on to offspring, happens in minutes rather than years.Continue reading ... Follow KevinMD.com on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Li...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - January 22, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Tags: Conditions Infectious disease Source Type: blogs
