October 10, 2014
A roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.
CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan participated in a TEDMED Great Challenges Google+ Live event earlier this week entitled Track, Treat, Prevent: A Better Battle Against Communicable Diseases. The panel conversation can be viewed online at TEDMED’s YouTube page.
On the CDDEP blog this week, Associate Director for Policy Hellen Gelband wrote about the Longitude Prize of 1714, global health competitions, reinventing toilets and antibiotic resistance—all in one blog post. [CDDEP]
The World Bank released a statement on Wednesday that estimates the financial toll of Ebola on West African economies could amount to as much as $32.6 billion. The virus has now been diagnosed in patients in both Spain and the United States; the first US-diagnosed patient died in a hospital in Dallas this week. [Reuters, NPR]
HealthMap, a project established by team of researchers and epidemiologists at Boston Children’s Hospital, has created an interactive projection map and timeline of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, showing projection models for varied levels of control over the next few months. [HealthMap]
Hospitalization rates from C. difficile, a common digestive tract infection connected with antibiotic overuse, nearly doubled in the US between 2001 and 2010, according to a new study in the Journal of Infection Control. [Al Jazeera America]
The US Enterovirus-D68 outbreak that began in mid-August has now progressed to 46 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [CDC]
A study released this week in JAMA Internal Medicine found that doctors are more likely to over-prescribe antibiotics later in the day. The researchers attributed the trend to physician fatigue by late afternoon, when prescriptions were most common. [The Daily Telegraph]
The state of Massachusetts made a quiet but critical change in healthcare transparency this week, when a law went to effect that mandates insurance companies publish prices of every medical procedure, test and office visit in a consumer-friendly format online. [Kaiser Health News]
Ebola isn’t the only hemorrhagic fever that’s shown up on the African continent lately: a case of the also-deadly Marburg virus recently appeared in Uganda, a country that occasionally sees both viruses and has containment methods already in place. [Quartz]
The majority of fatal allergic reactions in the US—up to 60%—are caused by drugs (and frequently antibiotics), according to a study published last week in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. [The New York Times]
American researchers have made a “potentially major medical breakthrough” in finding a cure for Type 1 diabetes; a Harvard University team announced major experimental success this week in their project that uses stem cells to regrow cells that produce insulin and control blood sugar levels. [BBC Health]
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