Antibiotics are drugs used to treat infections caused by bacteria and other microorganisms.
In hospitals, the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria can be transported from the skin or nasal cavity into open wounds and, possibly, the bloodstream, posing a fatal hazard. Staph infections killed over 20,000 Americans in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Plastic pollution in the ocean may serve as a source for novel antibiotics, according to a new student-led study conducted in collaboration with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
An international group led by McMaster University researchers, in partnership with the University of Paris Cité, has recognized and reconfigured the first ancient genome of E. coli using fragments derived from a 16th-century mummy’s gallstone.
Scientists have revealed how antibiotics can regress certain fast-growing bacteria. The research was published in the journal eLife on June 8th, 2022.
Over 670,000 people in Europe become ill each year as a result of pathogenic bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, and 33,000 people die as a result of the diseases they cause. Pathogens that are resistant to multiple antibiotics at the same time are particularly dangerous.
Infectious-bacteria-killing molecular machines have been persuaded to reconsider their goal.
Every year, 1.5 million people die from infections caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Antibiotics are available to treat tuberculosis, but the bacteria has evolved multi-drug resistant (MDR), extensively drug-resistant (XDR), and fully drug-resistant (TDR) strains in recent years.
Tuberculosis is a stubborn disease caused by even more stubborn bacteria. While many bacterial infections clear up within days of taking antibiotics, TB can take up to six months to clear up and, in some cases, never leave the human body. In 2020, it claimed 1.5 million lives, second only to COVID-19 in terms of infectious disease deaths.
The multidisciplinary Zurich research team Liver4Life has succeeded in doing something during a treatment attempt that had never been achieved in the history of medicine until now: it treated an originally damaged human liver in a machine for three days outside a body and then implanted the recovered organ into a cancer patient.
Researchers at McMaster University have discovered not only how specific viral infections potentially cause tissue damage, but also how to prevent it.
Patients are more susceptible to fungal infections because the immune system in the gut is disrupted when patients are given antibiotics in the hospital.
Many people believe tuberculosis (TB) is a disease of the past. Nonetheless, it claims over a million lives each year. Furthermore, the problem is escalating as Mycobacterium tuberculosis—the pathogen that causes tuberculosis develops resistance to the antibiotics used to treat the disease.
A preclinical study performed by Monash University researchers discovered that utilizing a combination of phages and antibiotics to treat bacterial infections may be considerably more successful than using the drugs separately.
Researchers from Jacobs School of Engineering and the University of California San Diego School of Medicine collaborated with colleagues from Baylor College of Medicine to decode the genetic diversity of Clostridioides difficile, an especially dangerous pathogen in healthcare settings, using a systems biology technique.
Antibiotic-resistant hospital pathogens are not to be underestimated as a health risk. A research team has now introduced a new approach for treating multiple-drug resistant Staphylococcus in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
When treating patients with acute infections, healthcare professionals must be able to quickly and properly determine which antibiotics are most effective in combating the disease.
Published in Nature Communications, research from the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic sought to understand how microbial communities help people resist pathogens.
Conjunctival Goblet Cells (CGCs) are specialized epithelial cells that secrete mucins to generate the tear film’s mucus layer.
Most antibiotics are double-edged swords. Besides killing the pathogen they are prescribed for, they also decimate beneficial bacteria and change the composition of the gut microbiome.
According to biomedical engineers at Duke University, the physical mechanism that enables high doses of antibiotics to encourage the transmission of antibiotic resistance across bacteria is now identified.