On European Antibiotic Awareness Day (EAAD), the European Public Health Alliance and the European Patients Forum jointly call on the European Commission and national governments to step up the fight against drug-resistant infections in the follow-up EU Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance announced for 2017. The EU has a vital role to play in protecting health security in Europe and empowering…
Good news for World Antibiotics Day on November 18th. As local substances carriers, antibiotic-loaded bone cements from Heraeus help in the battle against implant-associated infections in orthopaedics and trauma surgery to prevent infection. This is demonstrated by a new randomised study from Great Britain in which the use of double-loaded antibiotic bone cement following femoral head fracture…
Professor Peter Guggenbichler is only too aware of infection prevention and control issues in hospitals. Prior to his retirement in 2013, from the Children’s Hospital at Erlangen University Hospital, in Germany, he led the Infectiology and Preventive Medicine Department, for 25 years. ‘After countless nights on the intensive care ward I realised that the staff does not adhere to infection…
What do Casey Kasem, Christopher Reeve and Muhammad Ali have in common? They all died of sepsis: a rapid, potentially deadly reaction that affects millions each year.
In Europe, the first baby with Zika-related microcephaly was born in July. The mother had contracted the Zika virus while travelling in America. How dangerous is the virus for Europeans, particularly since many visited Brazil for the Olympic Games in Rio?
Airports are international travel hubs visited by large numbers of people. London Heathrow, for example, has an average of 205,400 travellers every day and saw 75 million people arriving and departing from all over the world in 2015. A study just published in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection suggest that international travellers can acquire antimicrobial-resistant bacteria and may…
An international study, led by the University of Southampton, shows the UK and France experience the highest number of malaria cases imported from other countries.
The increasing numbers of bacteria resistant to the newer generations of antibiotics is a public health problem on a global scale. Bacteria have an extraordinary capacity for adaptation, mutating permanently to overcome the action of our increasingly impotent antimicrobial armamentarium. A situation further aggravated by the use of the powerful ‘large spectrum’ antibiotics, creating further…
Scientists at the University of Basel discovered a fundamental new mechanism explaining the inadequate immune defense against chronic viral infection. These results may open up new avenues for vaccine development.
A new study by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests that a specialized area of the mosquito brain mixes tastes with smells to create unique and preferred flavors. The findings advance the possibility, they say, of identifying a substance that makes “human flavor” repulsive to the malaria-bearing species of the mosquitoes, so instead of feasting on us, they keep the disease to themselves,…
Malaria remains one of the world’s leading causes of mortality in developing countries. Last year alone, it killed more than 400,000 people, mostly young children. An international consortium of researchers unveiled the mechanics and findings of a unique “open science” project for malaria drug discovery that has been five years in the making.
A mobile fridge invented by a British student could help save countless lives across the globe. The “Isobar” has been designed to keep vaccines at the required temperatures when being transported around developing countries.
Researchers have found that Zika virus can live in eyes and have identified genetic material from the virus in tears, according to a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The research, in mice, helps explain why some Zika patients develop eye disease, including a condition known as uveitis that can lead to permanent vision loss.
Curetis N.V. announced the successful completion of the CE Performance Evaluation study of the next generation of its Unyvero ITI Implant and Tissue Infection Application Cartridge (Unyvero ITI).
Researchers have discovered that secondary infection with the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacterium (or “superbug”) often kills influenza patients because the flu virus alters the antibacterial response of white blood cells, causing them to damage the patients’ lungs instead of destroying the bacterium. The study suggests that inhibiting this response may help treat…
The first known household survey examining the collateral harm to pregnancy services in areas affected by the West African Ebola epidemic suggests a significant slide backwards in child and maternal health. The study, conducted in Liberia, points to the deep disruptions caused by the Ebola epidemic — even in parts of the country with relatively limited transmission.
Osnabrueck cognitive scientists and their students are developing new and intelligent expert systems, which help to effectively utilize the flood of daily information in everyday life. To enable working with large amounts of data, the Institute of Cognitive Science at Osnabrück University has engaged in a cooperation with the global corporation IBM, and will be able to access the IBM computer…
A study published by The BMJ provides more details of an association between Zika virus infection in the womb and a condition known as arthrogryposis, which causes joint deformities at birth, particularly in the arms and legs.
Research by scientists in the US and UK has estimated that up to 1.65 million childbearing women in Central and South America could become infected by the Zika virus by the end of the first wave of the epidemic. Researchers from the WorldPop Project and Flowminder Foundation at the University of Southampton and colleagues from the University of Notre Dame and University of Oxford have also found…
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified antibodies capable of protecting against Zika virus infection, a significant step toward developing a vaccine, better diagnostic tests and possibly new antibody-based therapies. The work, in mice, helps clarify recent research that also identified protective Zika antibodies but lacked important details on how the…
A new, epidemic strain of C. difficile is proving alarmingly deadly, and new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine not only explains why but also suggests a way to stop it.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Inc. (Siemens) an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its real-time PCR Zika Virus assay, the VERSANT® Zika RNA 1.0 Assay (kPCR) Kit. With respect to Zika in vitro diagnostic tests, FDA has been authorized to issue EUAs to allow for use of unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical…
Clinicians around the world have long suspected that bacteraemia due to Staphylococcus aureus has a worse outcome in women compared to men, but direct evidence has been elusive. A study just published confirms that significantly more women than men diagnosed with Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (SAB) – a blood infection of the common bacteria – die within 30 days.
Hospital-acquired Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is on the rise. Symptoms range from non-typical mild diarrhoea that can develop into pseudomembranous colitis up to a toxic megacolon, which often leads to death.
Wound infections after surgery are not uncommon and can be fatal. In Germany, postoperative wound infections are now the most common type of hospital acquired infection (HAI), with a proportion of 24%.
