November 21, 2014
A roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.
Hospitals in the United States are regularly missing opportunities to reduce antibiotic use, according to a new study authored by researchers at CDDEP and the University of Maryland and published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. One of the study’s authors, Nikolay Braykov, wrote a post for the CDDEP blog on the research and its potential significance in hospital antibiotic use practices. [Lancet Infectious Diseases, CDDEP]
Today is the last day of the CDC’s annual Get Smart About Antibiotics Week. CDDEP participated in numerous events for the week, including an engaging TEDMED twitter chat with CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan on antibiotic resistance. A special roundup of antibiotic resistance news from the last few months is now available on the CDDEP blog. [CDDEP]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest information on the extent of the Ebola outbreak has found a decline in the rate of the virus’s spread in Liberia, similar to reports from the World Health Organization last week. Clinical trials are expected to start next month for Ebola treatments at three different research centers in West Africa, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres. [The New York Times, BBC News]
Non-governmental organizations in the United States have noted a decline in healthcare worker sign-ups for volunteering to combat Ebola in West Africa, which some attribute to strict quarantine rules recently enforced by government officials in New York and New Jersey. [NPR]
Antibiotic use during pregnancy could indicate risk of childhood obesity, according to a study published last week by researchers at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. The study found that children whose mothers took antibiotics in the second or third trimester of pregnancy had an 84 percent higher risk of obesity by the age of seven. [International Journal of Obesity]
The H5N8 strain of avian flu has been identified on poultry farms in Germany, England and the Netherlands, according to the World Health Organization, which has stated that there is low risk of significant spread of the strain to human populations. [Reuters]
Wikipedia could be a useful tool for tracking disease outbreaks, according to researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Their study published this week tracked page views in the online encyclopedia for flu and tuberculosis in six countries and found a clear increase in web traffic four weeks before an outbreak was declared in the majority of cases. [PLOS Computational Biology]
An international randomized clinical trial has found that a three-drug regimen is the preferred method for preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission, according to a recent National Institutes of Health-funded study. [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases]
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study published this week found that though 1 in 3 American adults qualify as “excessive drinkers”, only around 10 percent can be described as dependent on alcohol, indicating that public health initiatives to combat excessive drinking need not solely focus on addiction, but adopt a strategy to address the variety of types of drinking in the US. [CDC]
And finally, a seasonally-appropriate campaign has begun to combat antibiotic resistance by asking consumers to pledge to buy antibiotic-free turkeys this Thanksgiving. Read more at Wired’s Superbugs blog. [WIRED]
CDDEP is currently hiring Research Analysts for our New Delhi, India office. For more information and to apply, visit CDDEP’s jobs page.
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Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
