May 15, 2015
A weekly roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.
The May issue of GARPNet News, the bimonthly newsletter of the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP), is now available online. The issue focuses on animal antibiotic use and includes recent CDDEP research on livestock antibiotic growth promoters, as well as global news on antibiotic resistance and updates from GARP working groups in East Africa and South and Southeast Asia. [CDDEP]
When the earth shook: A view from the Patan Hospital in Kathmandu. Dr. Buddha Basnyat, GARP-Nepal Chairman and Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) in Nepal, wrote about his experience of the April 25 earthquake and continuing relief efforts in the country. Basnyat also described the plans OUCRU-Nepal and the Patan Academy of Health Sciences have for surveillance and infection control measures post-earthquake and in anticipation of the oncoming monsoon season in Nepal. [Wellcome Trust]
Antibiotic-resistant typhoid is spreading throughout Africa and Asia. Salmonella Typhi of the resistant H58 lineage has been spreading across and between the two continents for 30 years, according to a study published in Nature. The study’s authors analyzed 2000 strains of the bacterium and found H58 in nearly half of them, prompting concerns that it could become the dominant strain of the pathogen, which kills around 200,000 annually. [Nature, The Guardian]
Liberia has been declared free of Ebola. Now that there hasn’t been a case of Ebola in the country in 48 days, Liberia is taking stock of the effects of diminished healthcare capacity that came with the outbreak. A measles outbreak has surfaced after vaccination rates plummeted in the last year, with over 500 cases reported so far, seven of them fatal. [BBC, NPR]
A $2 billion global fund and prizes for antibiotic development would incentivize pharmaceutical companies to create new drugs, according to the latest UK Review on Antimicrobial Resistance report. The report, the third in a series led by economist Jim O’Neill, argues that in order to revitalize the stalled antibiotic pipelines, pharmaceutical companies should be awarded prizes of $1.5–$3.5 billion for developing new antibiotics and a $2 billion global fund for early-stage antibiotic research should be established. According to O’Neill, funding for both would come from a combination of pharmaceutical companies, national governments and “the global taxpayer.” [Reuters, Review on Antimicrobial Resistance]
A World Bank study found that incentivizing people with lottery tickets led to a decrease in HIV transmission. The study’s authors created a program in Lesotho that rewarded negative tests for sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) with a lottery ticket for a cash prize. The HIV-incidence rate was 21.4 percent lower in the lottery group compared with a control group after two years. The reduction was over 60 percent in individuals identified as “risk-loving”, implying that those who may be likely to participate in risky sexual behavior may be swayed into not doing so with a risk-based reward in the form of a lottery ticket. [Foreign Policy, World Bank]
Can viruses and bacteria acquire resistance to vaccines? In a blogpost for The Incidental Economist, Boston University law professor Kevin Outterson reviewed recent papers on the subject to answer this question. He found that in several cases, as a vaccine targets specific serotypes of a virus or bacterium, other serotypes of the same pathogen can grow to occupy the ecological niche that the original one once did. This “serotype replacement” has been found in pneumococcus and HPV vaccines, and a modeling paper found that antibiotic use likely “confers an advantage on resistant strains.” Writes Outterson, “The solution is not to abandon vaccines, but to develop better vaccines that cover all serotypes and in the meantime to understand the impact on resistance.” [The Incidental Economist]
A group of U.S. Army researchers has developed a test that can diagnose infection with the chikungunya virus in an hour. The diagnostic, described in the Journal of Medical Entomology, is simple to use, does not require a cold chain and provides clear results. [Journal of Medical Entomology]
Researchers have found a three-way link between infant antibiotic use, gut microbiota changes and disease prevalence in adulthood. Previous studies have suggested that antibiotic use in infants creates an imbalance in gut bacteria—“dysbiosis”—that relates to disease acquisition later in life. To study the possible connection of early antibiotic use, dysbiosis and adult disease, researchers at the University of Minnesota synthesized hundreds of studies and found that early antibiotic use is related to increases in both infectious diseases and a variety of noncommunicable diseases, including obesity, autoimmune disorders and allergies. [Cell Host & Microbe]
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Image of Salmonella Typhi courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
