LGBT Americans report increased rates of memory loss and confusion — two early signs of dementia — compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts, a large survey has found. The observations present new risk factors to consider for Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, and raise questions about the potential influence of social [...]
Abstract Asthma prevalence has increased in epidemic proportions with urbanization, but growing up on traditional farms offers protection even today1. The asthma-protective effect of farms appears to be associated with rich home dust microbiota2,3, which could be used to model a health-promoting indoor microbiome. Photo Via Maxpixel by Creative Commons Zero – CC0 Read [...]
Health workers have started a massive measles vaccination campaign in north-east Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a region that’s in the grip of the second deadliest Ebola virus outbreak on record. UN Children’s Fund UNICEF said on Thursday that it aims to inoculate 67,000 children in Ituri province. They’re just a small fraction of the 400,000 people displaced [...]
Abstract Tucson, Arizona, USA, is a highly coccidioidomycosis-endemic area. We conducted a retrospective review of 815 patients in Tucson over 2.7 years. Of 276 patients with coccidioidomycosis, 246 had a delay in diagnosis; median delay was 23 days. Diagnosis delay was associated with coccidioidomycosis-related costs totaling $589,053 and included extensive antibacterial drug use. Coccidioidomycosis, also [...]
Abstract Antibiotics are a medical wonder, but an increasing frequency of resistance among most human pathogens is rendering them ineffective. If this trend continues, the consequences for public health and for the general community could be catastrophic. The current clinical pipeline, however, is very limited and is dominated by derivatives of established classes, the [...]
C. difficile has shown antibiotic resistance in people. Now it’s shown to be resistant to efforts to destroy it on surfaces by cleaning. By Erika Edwards Dangerous bacteria that pose a particular threat to the elderly and very sick hospital patients have been shown to survive on disposable hospital gowns and stainless steel surfaces — even [...]
Abstract Clostridium difficile is the primary cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea globally. In unfavourable environments the organism produces highly resistant spores which can survive microbicidal insult. Our previous research determined the ability of C. difficile spores to adhere to clinical surfaces ; finding that spores had marked different hydrophobic properties and adherence ability. Investigation into the [...]
Summary Background Influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, parainfluenza virus, and metapneumovirus are the most common viruses associated with acute lower respiratory infections in young children (
There is a joke in China that the North Korean’s have two weapons of mass destruction: nukes and tuberculosis (TB). And not just TB, but multidrug resistant TB – which knows no boundaries or borders, and is spread person-to-person through the air. The country is also experiencing exceptionally high rates of malaria and hepatitis B. Credit: iStock, Dr_Microbe Read [...]
Biopharmaceutical company Appili Therapeutics Inc. announced that it will receive a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to fund its AT1-1503 antibiotic program, which targets gram-negative ESKAPE pathogens. ESKAPE pathogens — Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species — have become increasingly problematic in recent years because of the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture [...]
