Weekly Digest: Animal antibiotic use rising globally, Sierra Leone plans second Ebola lockdown

Worldwide animal antibiotic use is expected to increase dramatically in the next fifteen years. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and co-authored by CDDEP’s Ramanan Laxminarayan and Charles Brower conducted for the first time a broad assessment of global antibiotic consumption in livestock and found that use is expected to grow 67% between 2010 and 2030. The study found that around two-thirds of this growth is due to an increase in the number of animals raised for food production, while the remaining third is attributable to changing farming practices. “Our findings advance our understanding of the consequences of the rampant growth of livestock antibiotic use and its effects on human health—a crucial step towards addressing the problem of antibiotic resistance,” said Laxminarayan. [PNAS, CDDEP]

How do we distribute vaccines to the most remote parts of the world? CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan’s TEDxGateway talk on this question, “Saving lives with a needle,” is now available to watch online. In the talk, Laxminarayan speaks about how he and the Immunization Technical Support Unit in India overcame the challenge of vaccine delivery to bring vaccines to children living in the remotest parts of the country. [TEDxGateway]

Volume 1, Issue 2 of GARPNet News, the bimonthly newsletter of the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP), is now available online. The newsletter features stories on work being done around the world to combat antibiotic resistance. This issue’s feature story focuses on the Uganda National Academy of Sciences, the secretariat of the GARP-Uganda working group. Sign up to receive the newsletter here. [CDDEP]

Rising female abortions in India since 1990 can be tied to technological changes. According to an article in New Scientist, ultrasound clinics that allow parents to determine the sex of their child (and potentially then choose to have an abortion) have become more prevalent in many areas of the country since the 1990s, while researchers have estimated that up to 10 million girls were aborted between 1991 and 2011. CDDEP fellow Arindam Nandi, who has done research on the subject, was interviewed for the article. “You can get an ultrasound in villages that don’t have clean drinking water,” said Nandi. [New Scientist, The Lancet]

Brain swelling is frequently the cause of death in children who die from cerebral malaria, according to research published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Cerebral malaria, a particularly severe and dangerous form of the disease, kills between 15 and 25 percent of African children who contract it, though for years doctors have not been certain of the precise cause of death. In the study, conducted by researchers in Malawi, 84 percent of children who died from the disease showed evidence of brain swelling while only 27 percent of those who survived did. [NEJM]

A £195m fund has been established in the UK to fight drug-resistant infections. The Fleming Fund, as it has been named, was created in response to recommendations from the UK Review on Antimicrobial Resistance and includes contributions from the UK government, the Wellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other international charities. [Financial Times]

Sierra Leone will institute a second lockdown to prevent Ebola transmissions. The 72-hour lockdown will take place from March 27-29 to allow authorities to search for previously unrecorded patients and remind people about the danger of unsafe burials. In the last few weeks, several American and UK health workers have become infected with the virus while working in West Africa and concerns about the outbreak have resurfaced in Sierra Leone, where 300 healthcare workers have been infected and almost three-quarters have died since the epidemic started. An American who contracted Ebola in the country is currently in critical condition and being treated at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. [The Guardian, The Washington Post]

A new two-hour blood test may be able to tell whether an infection is viral or bacterial—and help steward antibiotics. The diagnostic, created by a team of Israeli scientists who collaborated with the company MeMed and described in a PLOS ONE paper, examines protein pathways in blood to distinguish between viral and bacterial infections. The researchers stated that the test has promising implications for antibiotic stewardship but needs further testing for efficacy before clinical use.  [BBC, PLOS ONE, PubMed Health]

Six college students in Oregon have become infected with meningococcal disease since January. Officials at the University of Oregon announced this week that a sixth student has contracted meningococcemia, a vaccine-preventable bacterial infection that can lead to meningitis and widespread blood infections. One of the six students, an 18-year-old undergraduate, died from the infection. University health officials are urging students to get vaccinated against the disease; as of mid-March, only 9,000 out of 22,000 undergraduates had received the vaccine. [Reuters]

Two antibiotics have been shown to be equally effective at treating uncomplicated serious skin infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).  In four different outpatient hospital centers, researchers randomly assigned patients with such infections treatment with either clindamycin or co-trimoxazole (TMP-SMX). Their results show that within 7 to 10 days clindamycin cured 80.3 percent of patients and TMP-SMX cured 77.7 percent of patients.  [New England Journal of Medicine]