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Casey Finnerty

Disappearing Seagrass Protects Against Pathogens, Even Climate Change, Scientists Find ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-pathogens-global-warming.html

climate change microbiology

shared by Casey Finnerty on 17 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Seagrass meadows, among the most endangered ecosystems on Earth, play an outsize role in the health of the oceans.
  • The plants also fight disease, it turns out. A team of scientists reported on Thursday that seagrasses can purge pathogens from the ocean that threaten humans and coral reefs alike.
  • But the meadows are vanishing at a rate of a football field every 30 minutes.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • In one survey, they collected seawater and put it in petri dishes to see if colonies of disease-causing bacteria known as Enterococcus grew from the samples.
  • In a second search, the scientists grabbed fragments of DNA floating in seawater.
  • Water from the seagrass meadows had only half the level of this DNA, compared with water collected at other sites.
  • Reefs next to seagrass meadows, they found, were half as diseased as those without meadows.
  • Seagrass meadows can release so much oxygen that the surrounding water fizzes like champagne. That oxygen might be able to kill pathogens, Dr. Lamb realized. The plants also host fungi, which are known to producing bacteria-killing compounds.
  • Their research points to two main culprits. Eroded dirt washes into the Chesapeake, making the water cloudy. Seagrass get so little sunlight that the resulting dimming can be deadly.
  • Seagrass is also being pummeled by climate change. Warmer summer temperatures in Chesapeake Bay cause the plants to lose much of their oxygen through their leaves. With less oxygen to pump into their roots, they are poisoned by toxic sediments.
Casey Finnerty

Flawed herpes testing leads to false positives, and needless suffering - 0 views

www.statnews.com/...herpes-testing-false-positives

molecular diagnostics herpesvirus

shared by Casey Finnerty on 08 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Up to 1 in 2 positive tests could be false, according to the USPSTF’s most recent guidelines.
Casey Finnerty

HEALTH - Healing Treatment, 4,000 Years Old, Is Revived - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...4000-years-old-is-revived.html

shared by Casey Finnerty on 06 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Casey Finnerty on 06 Feb 17
     
    A good story on the treatment of packing infected wounds with sugar
Casey Finnerty

H. Boyd Woodruff, Microbiologist Who Paved Way for Antibiotics, Dies at 99 - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ad-antibiotics-researcher.html

antibiotics microbiology

shared by Casey Finnerty on 04 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • In high school, he considered becoming an architect but, he later recalled, decided he wanted to be a chemist after taking an experimental course that encouraged “unexpected smells and disruptions of nearby classes,” he wrote in the Annual Review of Microbiology in 1981.
  • During that suit, Dr. Waksman said that in isolating streptothricin, Dr. Woodruff had contributed “as much as 20 times” more than Dr. Schatz to the later discovery of streptomycin,
  • “The studies of Albert Schatz in his discovery of streptomycin,” he said, “were dependent on the initial antibiotic demonstration by Boyd Woodruff that one could isolate soil microorganisms, culture them and recover inhibitory compounds from them.”
Casey Finnerty

Resistance to the Antibiotic of Last Resort Is Silently Spreading - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...512705

antibiotic resistance

shared by Casey Finnerty on 23 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • farmers started using it by the tons in animals, where low doses of antibiotics can promote growth.
  • November 18, 2015, scientists published a report in the British medical journal The Lancet: A single, easily spreadable gene makes the bacteria that carry it resistant to colistin, our antibiotic of last resort.
  • Chinese scientists had found this gene, called mcr-1, in pig farms and on meat in supermarkets.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • By the time anyone had figured out mcr-1’s existence, it had already spread around the world.  
Casey Finnerty

We Will Miss Antibiotics When They're Gone - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...d-a-post-antibiotic-world.html

antibiotic resistance

shared by Casey Finnerty on 20 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • more than 23,000 people in the United States are estimated to die every year from resistant bacteria.
  • Yet few new antibiotics are in development. Most large drug companies have fled the field. The reason is simple: To conserve their effectiveness, new antibiotics are put on the shelf to be used only when older antibiotics stop working. That makes perfect sense for public health, but companies can’t make a profit on what they can’t sell.
Casey Finnerty

A superbug that resisted 26 antibiotics | Minnesota Public Radio News - 0 views

www.mprnews.org/...g-that-resisted-26-antibiotics

antibiotic resistance

shared by Casey Finnerty on 18 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • a woman in Nevada who died of an incurable infection, resistant to all 26 antibiotics available in the U.S. to treat infection.
  • as people cross borders and board airplanes, the bacteria spread in the same way that brought CRE to Reno.
  • all hospitals should double down on preventive efforts, including a travel history.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But in this case, there was no effective antibiotic. "And we're going to see more of these, from a drip, drip, drip of cases to a steady drizzle to a rainstorm," predicts Johnson. "It's scary, but it's good to get scared if that motivates action."
  • The action needed is to use antibiotics wisely, in people and in animals, so strains of bacteria don't get a chance to develop resistance, says Johnson. And to continue research into development of new antibiotics.
Casey Finnerty

First criminal trial in deadly fungal meningitis outbreak begins Monday - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...96331252

fungus contamination

shared by Casey Finnerty on 09 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Casey Finnerty on 09 Jan 17
     
    "First criminal trial in deadly fungal meningitis outbreak begins Monday"
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