October 04, 2013
A roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.
Wired s Superbug blog discusses how the shutdown of the US federal government will affect public health, global health, food safety, and the spread of scary diseases. Another article in Wired highlights the effects of the government shutdown on biomedical research, while a WSJ article also explains the impact at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). [Wired, Wired, WSJ]
A new study published in Science Translational Medicine shows how strategic administration of different antibiotics helps combat drug resistance in vitro. [The Scientist]
A new report titled Roadmap for Childhood Tuberculosis: Towards Zero Deaths launched on Wednesday by a number of global agencies including the WHO and the US CDC outlines immediate actions that can prevent the deaths of more than 74,000 children attributed to TB annually. [VOA]
An animated video produced by PhD Comics follows Professor Naowarat Cheeptham into the caves she searches for bacteria and fungi that might be able to produce the next generation of antibiotics. [Phd Comics]
In order to reduce healthcare-associated infections, the CDC and hospitals are encouraging patients to ask doctors and medical staff whether they have washed their hands. [WSJ]
A new poo pill that acts similarly to a fecal transplant has been shown to be highly effective at treating Clostridium difficile in a small trial. While difficult to mass produce (the pills must be created specially for each patient), this method could offer hospitals an easier way to fight this bacteria. [CTV News]
Brookings, an independent US policy think thank, blogs on the market failures that have resulted in decreased development of new antibiotics, and potential solutions to correct these problems. [Brookings]
An article in Health Affairs summarizes the results of On the CUSP: Stop BSI, a national initiative in the US that reduced the rate of central line-associated bloodstream infections to 1 per 1000 line-days, and offers policy recommendations for other nationwide programs. [Health Affairs]
In The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes about the improvements in global health as measured by the decline in child mortality, lower deaths due to infectious diseases, and better health care facilities primarily as a result of the declining poverty across the world. [The New York Times]
As more people start using online resources such as Wikipedia to diagnose their medical conditions, an article in The Atlantic interviews Dr. Amin Azzam, a professor whose class will enable fourth-year medical students to earn course credit for editing medical articles on Wikipedia. [The Atlantic]
An experiment posted in Science of sending fake studies with flawed experiments to 304 open-access journals shows that many of these journals have little or no editorial involvement and peer-review. This interactive tool locates these journals in a map. Meanwhile, some critics argue that the problem isn t only limited to open access journals. The same edition of Science discusses how open peer reviews could help solve some of the problems in scientific publishing.
The Economist also wrote about increasing academic fraud in research and the growing market for fake scholarly articles, particularly in China. [The Economist]
If you are a physician, pharmacist or microbiologist, please fill out this survey created by the Antimicrobial Stewardship and Antimicrobial Resistance Working Groups of the International Society of Chemotherapy to evaluate current approaches to the therapy of resistant Gram-negative bacillus infections.
Image via jcbwalsh/Flickr
