News • Cerebrovascular injuries
Infection hinders blood vessel repair following traumatic brain injury
Researchers have found a possible explanation for why some patients recover much more poorly from brain injury if they later become infected.
Bacteria
News • Combined with antibiotics
Bacteria-killing viruses to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria
Researchers have found a way to defeat the multi-resistant bacterium Mycobacterium abscessus, a relative of the causes of tuberculosis and leprosy.
News • Battle against Covid-19 & other infectious diseases
WHO opens Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin
To better prepare and protect the world from global disease threats, H.E. German Federal Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, have inaugurated the new WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, based in Berlin.
News • Altered bacterial function
Accumulation of drugs in the gut may reduce their effectiveness
Common medications can accumulate in gut bacteria, a new study has found, altering bacterial function and potentially reducing the medications’ effectiveness. These interactions - seen for many drugs including those used to treat depression, diabetes, and asthma - could help researchers to better understand how drug effectiveness and side-effects differ between individuals. The study is…
News • Population bottlenecks
Random effects make it difficult to optimise antibiotic therapy
Antibiotic-resistant pathogens have become one of the greatest threats to public health. The basic mechanisms of resistance evolution have been well studied experimentally and are an important research field at Kiel University. An important factor in this context, but one that has received little attention so far, is the population size of the respective pathogen. Over the course of an infection…
News • A new tool to combat superbugs
Defeating antibiotic resistant bacteria with 'molecular tweezers'
Antibiotic resistant bacteria are a looming super threat – heralding a time when our drugs will no longer be effective against prevalent infections. Hospitals are already coping with treatment-resistant bacterial infections. Cognizant of the threat and thinking outside the box, BGU scientists and German and American colleagues have developed a pair of 'molecular tweezers' to destroy the biofilm…
News • No more antibiotics?
AI identifies proteins causing intestinal disease
Researchers from Tel Aviv University have created an artificial intelligence platform that can identify the specific proteins that allow bacteria to infect the intestines.
News • Battling bacteria
Stress test finds cracks in the armor of harmful hospital bugs
Research has identified critical factors that enable dangerous bacteria to spread disease by surviving on surfaces in hospitals and kitchens. The study into the mechanisms which enable the opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa to survive on surfaces, could lead to new ways of targeting harmful bacteria. To survive outside their host, pathogenic bacteria must withstand various…
News • Bioorganic chemistry
Why M. tuberculosis is so resistant to drugs and immune defenses
A consortium of researchers from Russia, Belarus, Japan, Germany and France led by the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology have uncovered the way in which Mycobacterium tuberculosis survives in iron-deficient conditions by utilizing rubredoxin B, a protein from a rubredoxin family that play an important role in adaptation to changing environmental conditions.
News • Protection from bacteria, fungi, viruses
Antimicrobial technologies – how do they work?
Antimicrobial technologies such as coatings and textiles containing silver and copper are helping people during the Covid-19 pandemic by ensuring that whatever they touch, whether that is a door handle or their own mask, is free from live SARS-CoV-2 particles. But how exactly do these antimicrobial technologies work? How can a silver, copper or even polymeric coating kill microorganisms such as…
News • Biochemistry
Potential trigger of Crohn’s disease found
Potentially game-changing research led by McMaster University scientists may finally bring relief to millions of people worldwide living with Crohn’s disease. Investigator Brian Coombes said his team identified a strain of adherent-invasive E-coli (AIEC) that is strongly implicated in the condition and is often found in the intestines of people with Crohn’s disease. “If you examine the gut…
News • Putting pathogens on mute
A novel strategy for treating hospital germs
Researchers have developed an innovative method to disrupt the formation of biofilms and thus facilitate the treatment of infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
News • Covid-19 impact on vaccination
Antibiotic resistance could make diphtheria ‘major global threat’ again
Diphtheria – a relatively easily-preventable infection – is evolving to become resistant to a number of classes of antibiotics and in future could lead to vaccine escape, warn an international team of researchers from the UK and India. The researchers, led by scientists at the University of Cambridge, say that the impact of Covid-19 on diphtheria vaccination schedules, coupled with a rise in…
News • Infection research
Mutations help bacteria resist antibiotic treatment
Bacteria have many ways to evade the antibiotics that we use against them. Each year, at least 2.8 million people in the United States develop an antibiotic-resistant infection, and more than 35,000 people die from such infections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Most of the mutations known to confer resistance occur in the genes targeted by a particular antibiotic. Other…
News • Genome study reveals
Blood group affects composition of intestinal microbiome
For several years, scientists worldwide have been investigating the extent to which microorganisms living in and on the human body influence central life processes and thus health and disease. Today they assume that there is a connection between the totality of the microbial colonization in the human body, called the microbiome, and the development of diseases. Chronic inflammatory bowel disease…
News • Influence of gut bacteria
How our gut microbiome affects Covid-19 severity
The variety and volume of bacteria in the gut, known as the microbiome, may influence the severity of Covid-19 as well as the magnitude of the immune system response to the infection, suggests research published online in the journal Gut. Imbalances in the make-up of the microbiome may also be implicated in persisting inflammatory symptoms, dubbed ‘long Covid’, the findings suggest. Covid-19…
News • Toxins in the gut
Connecting our microbiome to breast cancer development
A microbe found in the colon and commonly associated with the development of colitis and colon cancer also may play a role in the development of some breast cancers, according to new research from investigators with the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. Breast tissue cells exposed to this toxin retain a long-term memory, increasing the…
Video • Correlative light, electron and ion microscopy in tissue
New imaging method reveals bacteria hiding from antibiotics
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Western Australia have developed a new imaging method to see where antibiotics have reached bacteria within tissues. The method could be used to help develop more effective antibiotic treatments, reducing the risk of antibiotic resistance.
News • Type and abundance
Mouth bacteria linked to lung cancer risk in non-smokers
The type and abundance of bacteria found in the mouth may be linked to lung cancer risk in non-smokers, finds the first study of its kind, published online in the journal Thorax.
News • Microscopy
Cell membranes in super resolution
For the first time ever, expansion microscopy allows the imaging of even the finest details of cell membranes. This offers new insights into bacterial and viral infection processes.
News • Faster testing
Device rapidly detects antibiotic-resistant bacteria
Bacterial infections have become one of the biggest health problems worldwide, and a recent study shows that COVID-19 patients have a much greater chance of acquiring secondary bacterial infections, which significantly increases the mortality rate.
News • Solving a mystery
How the TB bacterium develops rapid resistance to antibiotics
For a slow-growing microbe that multiplies infrequently, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes tuberculosis (TB) has long puzzled researchers as to how it develops resistance to antibiotics so quickly, in a matter of weeks to months.
News • Computer vision
Innovative hand hygiene solution uses AI
Russian tech company Connectome.ai is bringing its innovative Directiva.ai hand hygiene teaching and monitoring system to two major clinics owned by the European Medical Center group, the leading private healthcare provider in Moscow and the surrounding region.
News • Hospital germs
The reasons for different adhesion mechanisms of bacteria
Researchers have shown why hospital germs adhere strongly to surfaces from which water simply rolls off, but bind so poorly to surfaces that are easily wetted by water.
News • MRSA, E.Coli & co
New compound kills antibiotic resistant superbugs
Researchers at the University of Sheffield have developed a new compound that is able to kill both gram-positive and gram-negative antibiotic-resistant bacteria.