Syphilis and chlamydia infections were reduced by half among men who have sex with men and transgender women 1 year after San Francisco rolled out doxycycline postexposure prophylaxis (doxy-PEP), according to data presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Denver this week. Read more in Medscape.
antibiotics
Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Were in Hedgehogs a Century Before We Used Antibiotics
Study suggests the dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as MRSA first evolved naturally. As soon as humans started using antibiotics to fight bacterial infections, the bacteria started evolving ways to fight back. But new research shows that one so-called “superbug” resistant to important front-line antibiotics has been lurking in hedgehogs for more than 200 years, long […]
Artificial Intelligence Identifies Potential New Antibiotics
Machine learning turbocharges the process of identifying molecules to test for bacteria-attacking properties. Many dangerous bacteria are evolving resistance to our existing antibiotics faster than we can develop new ones. But now researchers have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to dramatically speed up the search for new drugs — and found a promising one […]
Solithromycin rejection chills antibiotic sector
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December rejected the new antibiotic solithromycin over liver toxicity fears, putting the future of the drug in doubt and sending a chill through companies working on novel antimicrobials. “The problems with solithromycin are going to hit the whole sector hard,” says Lloyd Czaplewski, director of Chemical Biology […]
A ray of hope amid antibiotic gloom
As antibiotic resistance continues to threaten the treatment of various infections, researchers are looking for new ways to supplement and in some cases replace failing antimicrobial drugs. When it comes to tackling infections, we’ve had it pretty good for the past 90 years. The development of antibiotics has turned many previously deadly infections into mere […]
Strategies to reduce the use of antibiotics in animals
New drugs that could eventually replace or reduce the use of antibiotics in animals are in development to help slow the rise of antibiotic resistance. Imagine a farm with over 100,000 head of cattle, each one receiving daily low-dose antibiotics in their food or water, not to treat illness, but to make them put on […]
Bacteria-killing dispute casts doubt on antibiotic development
Antibiotic drugs are one of the cornerstones of modern medicine, but, surprisingly, scientists still don’t understand all of the ways in which they work. So when biomedical engineer James Collins and his team at Boston University announced several years back that they had discovered a common mechanism of cell death underlying all major classes of […]
C. diff rates falling but still a concern
Ten years after an outbreak of Clostridium difficile killed as many as 2000 people in Quebec, the diarrhea-causing bacterium is infecting fewer people in Canadian hospitals, though it remains a major public health concern. Read more in CMAJ.
Silver makes antibiotics thousands of times more effective
Ancient antimicrobial treatment could help to solve modern bacterial resistance. Like werewolves and vampires, bacteria have a weakness: silver. The precious metal has been used to fight infection for thousands of years — Hippocrates first described its antimicrobial properties in 400 bc — but how it works has been a mystery. Now, a team led by James […]