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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Casey Finnerty

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Casey Finnerty

BBC News - Antibiotic 'apocalypse' warning - 1 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...health-21178718

microbiology antibiotic resistance

shared by Casey Finnerty on 24 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Casey Finnerty on 07 Mar 13
     
    Some UK perspective on the antibiotic resistance problem.
Casey Finnerty

Vital Signs: Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae - 1 views

www.cdc.gov/...mm6209a3.htm

microbiology antibiotic resistance CRE

shared by Casey Finnerty on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Casey Finnerty on 07 Mar 13
     
    This week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report focuses on CRE.
Casey Finnerty

Hospitals Fight To Stop Superbugs' Spread : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...fight-to-stop-superbugs-spread

microbiology antibiotic resistance CRE

shared by Casey Finnerty on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • CONAN: Well, is there something that - some things that every hospital or every clinic should be doing in order to minimize the risk? PERENCEVICH: I think one of the most important things they can do is make sure their microbiology lab is able to detect these strains.
Casey Finnerty

'We Have a Limited Window of Opportunity': CDC Warns of Resistance 'Nightmare' | Wired ... - 0 views

www.wired.com/...cre-cdc

microbiology antibiotic resistance

shared by Casey Finnerty on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • “We have a very serious problem, and we need to sound an alarm.”
  • Healthcare institutions in 42 states have now identified at least one case of CRE. The occurrence of this resistance in the overall family of bacteria has risen at least four-fold over 10 years. In the CDC’s surveillance networks, 4.6 percent of hospitals and 17.8 percent of long-term care facilities diagnosed this bug in the first half of 2012.
  • CRE stands for “carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae.” Enterobacteriaceae are a family of more than 70 bacteria which share the characteristic of being gut-dwelling (“entero”)
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • the CDC reviewed six steps that they first published last year in a CRE Toolkit and want health care facilities to take:
  • But an important point is that none of this is required, and none of this is funded.
  • There are no reimbursements, under Medicare, for infection-control as a hospital task
  • Casey Finnerty on 07 Mar 13
     
    This article does a good job summarizing this week's announcement by the CDC director on the gravity of the CRE problem.
Casey Finnerty

Baby With H.I.V. Is Reported Cured - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-cured-of-hiv-doctors-say.html

HIV microbiology virology immunity

shared by Casey Finnerty on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • If the report is confirmed, the child born in Mississippi would be only the second well-documented case of a cure in the world
  • Typically a newborn with an infected mother would be given one or two drugs as a prophylactic measure. But Dr. Gay said that based on her experience, she almost immediately used a three-drug regimen aimed at treatment, not prophylaxis, not even waiting for the test results confirming infection.
  • Virus levels rapidly declined with treatment and were undetectable by the time the baby was a month old. That remained the case until the baby was 18 months old, after which the mother stopped coming to the hospital and stopped giving the drugs.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Dr. Gay contacted Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, an immunologist at the University of Massachusetts,
  • Dr. Steven Deeks, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said if the reservoir never established itself, then he would not call it a true cure, though this was somewhat a matter of semantics. “Was there enough time for a latent reservoir, the true barrier to cure, to establish itself?” he said.
  • One hypothesis is that the drugs killed off the virus before it could establish a hidden reservoir in the baby.
  • They found tiny amounts of some viral genetic material but no virus able to replicate, even lying dormant in so-called reservoirs in the body.
  • “For pediatrics, this is our Timothy Brown,” said Dr. Deborah Persaud, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and lead author of the report on the baby. “It’s proof of principle that we can cure H.I.V. infection if we can replicate this case.”
  • Dr. Hannah B. Gay, an associate professor of pediatrics,
  • The results have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.
  • The baby, born in rural Mississippi, was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs starting around 30 hours after birth, something that is not usually done. If further study shows this works in other babies, it will almost certainly be recommended globally.
  • those reports and this new one could suggest there is something different about babies’ immune systems, said Dr. Joseph McCune of the University of California, San Francisco.
  • the results could lead to a new protocol for quickly testing and treating infants.
Casey Finnerty

The Virus That Learns - Phenomena: The Loom - 0 views

phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/...the-virus-that-learns

microbiology CRISPR

shared by Casey Finnerty on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Likewise, restriction enzymes are a dangerous defense, because they can chop up the distinctive stretches of DNA in a bacterium’s own genes. It avoids attacking itself by capping those sequences in its own DNA, so that the restriction enzymes can’t reach them.
  • Some species can muck up the production of new viruses, stealing their proteins before they can form shells. Others commit suicide upon infection, so as to avoid becoming an incubator for new viruses that would then kill their nearby relatives.
  • CRISPR genes can produce RNA molecules with a matching sequence. They grab onto the virus’s RNA and prevent them from being turned into proteins. The virus factory grinds to a halt.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The bacteria hold onto an invading virus’s DNA, so that they are now prepared for a fresh attack. And over time, bacteria can build up little libraries of these virus barcodes. 
  • Last year, scientists at Indiana University surveyed the bacteria in people’s mouths and discovered 8,000 different viral barcodes–many of them corresponding to viruses scientists have yet to discover.
  • But if you build up a healthy store of antibodies to various strains of flu, smallpox, and other diseases, all that knowledge dies with you.
  • Not so for bacteria. When a microbe reproduces, it passes down its CRISPR genes and all of their viral barcodes to its descendants–including the ones it acquired in its own lifetime.
  • Last fall, for example, University of Cambridge scientists discovered viruses that carry an antidote for the suicide toxin made by their hosts. When the bacteria want to die, the virus forces them to live on. And just last month, University of Toronto scientists even discovered anti-CRISPR genes in viruses, which the viruses use to shut down the production of virus-killing molecules.
  • the scientists demonstrated that the ICP1 virus uses its CRISPR immune system to attack its host’s virus-attacking genes.
Casey Finnerty

Infections With 'Nightmare Bacteria' Are On The Rise In U.S. Hospitals : Shots - Health... - 1 views

www.npr.org/...e-on-the-rise-in-u-s-hospitals

microbiology antibiotic resistance CRE

shared by Casey Finnerty on 05 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE
  • "They're basically a triple threat."
  • they are resistant to virtually all antibiotics
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Infectious disease specialist Dr. Brad Spellberg, of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, likens the situation to the Titanic's ill-fated voyage. "We're not talking about an iceberg that's down the line," he says. "The ship has hit the iceberg. We're taking on water. We already have people dying. Not only of CRE, but of untreatable CRE."
  • "If CRE spreads out of hospitals and into communities, that's when the ship is totally underwater and we all drown," Spellberg says.
Casey Finnerty

A DNA Lesson, From the Expert's Pen - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...-the-pen-of-francis-crick.html

microbiology molecular biology dna

shared by Casey Finnerty on 27 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The final piece in solving the puzzle of DNA was achieved on the morning of Feb. 28, 60 years ago this week, when Dr. Watson saw how the bases of DNA paired up.
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