Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is becoming more prevalent around the world, constituting a serious threat to public health. When bacteria acquire resistance against antibiotics, common medical procedures – for example, in surgery – become impossible due to the high infection risk. Keep reading to find out about AMR research, development of new antibiotics and antibiotic alternatives.
Periprosthetic infections and revisions are on the rise in Germany and worldwide, with significant consequences for affected patients as well as for the healthcare systems. Precisely because the number of patients at higher risk of infection in arthroplasty continues to rise, attention is increasingly focused on how this dreaded complication can be avoided.
Antibiotic prescribing in primary care could be monitored using health insurance data. And reduced with a simple test.
A new study could one day help health workers determine whether bacteria of the species Streptococcus pneumoniae, which cause meningitis, are resistant to antibiotics.
Bacteriophages – viruses that kill bacteria – could be a solution for fighting antibiotic-resistant pathogens, French researchers have developed a model to better predict their efficacy.
The search for rare mutations in bacterial genome could lead to better diagnostics and treatments – reducing morbidity caused by the deadly disease.
Climate change and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are forming an alarming alliance: Global warming creates new breeding grounds for resistant bacteria. A serious and very real threat to public health – but not quite the doomsday scenario some might make it out to be, says Prof Sabiha Essack from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa.
Finding the right antibiotic dose is akin to a Goldilocks problem: give too little, and the infection will persist; too much, and side-effects will override the benefits of the therapy. To get it “just right”, Prof Dr Birgit Koch talks about dosing optimisation in the clinical setting.
Researchers find that drug-resistant bacteria can be distinguished from non-resistant bacteria based on structural changes evident in electron microscope images with high accuracy using deep learning.
An international team of scientists have shown that small and large bacterial populations follow qualitatively different evolutionary paths to develop antibiotic resistance.
A type of the antibiotic resistant superbug MRSA arose in nature long before the use of antibiotics in humans and livestock, which has traditionally been blamed for its emergence.
The long-term impact of the coronavirus pandemic on antimicrobial resistance remains difficult to predict. Infectious diseases consultant Professor Alison Holmes reflects on Covid-19's effect on antibiotic use in hospitals and beyond.
For many years, antibiotic consumption in France was at an alarming level, resulting in a worryingly constant increase in antibiotic resistance However, a newly-enforced strict national plan appears to be having effect.
To counteract the spread of resistant germs, researchers have developed new drug candidates that are able to render one of the most important hospital germs harmless.
According to scientists at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering, discarded polystyrene broken down into microplastics provides a cozy home not only for microbes and chemical contaminants but also for the free-floating genetic materials that deliver to bacteria the gift of resistance.
Experts predict that without intervention, the problem of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections could be catastrophic by 2050, killing nearly 10 million people each year.
The sharpest images ever of living bacteria have been recorded by researchers at University College London, revealing the complex architecture of the protective layer that surrounds many bacteria and makes them harder to be killed by antibiotics.
The skin bacterium Staphylococcus aureus often develops antibiotic resistance. It can then cause infections that are difficult to treat. Researchers at the University of Bonn have uncovered an ingenious way in which a certain strain of Staphylococcus aureus protects itself against the important antibiotic vancomycin. The results have now been published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum.
Making recommendations for change, academics analyzed global data into the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in urban areas—the rise of which is threatening the lifesaving role of the medications.
Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and Pulmobiotics S.L have created the first ‘living medicine’ to treat antibiotic-resistant bacteria growing on the surfaces of medical implants. The researchers created the treatment by removing a common bacteria’s ability to cause disease and repurposing it to attack harmful microbes instead.
