Drug Resistance

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Status Brief

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2010

Ziff, Deborah; Seely, Ron, “UW-Madison professor barred from lab for potentially dangerous experiments,” May 11, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/education/university/article_bc095ae8-5d4a-11df-8e83-001cc4c03286.html last checked 10/30/2011.

  1. “A UW-Madison professor who studies an infectious disease lost his laboratory privileges for five years after conducting unauthorized experiments with a potentially dangerous drug-resistant germ.”
  2. “One person who worked in professor Gary Splitter’s lab got brucellosis but university officials don’t know if that individual, who has since recovered, caught the strain used in the unauthorized experiments.”
  3. “Brucellosis is a disease that is usually found in farm animals but can spread to humans and cause flu-like symptoms or worse.”
  4. “The 2007 experiments, which the National Institutes of Health calls a ‘major action violation,’ in part prompted the university to beef up its biological safety oversight. The university was also fined $40,000.”
  5. “Splitter, a tenured professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine, won’t be allowed to work in a lab for five years because of the violation.”
  6. “Splitter said he was not aware of the unauthorized experiments, which he said were conducted by graduate students in his lab, and that the university did not properly educate researchers about guidelines for working with antibiotic-resistant strains.”
  7. “His lab created antibiotic-resistant strains of brucellosis and inserted them into mice in 2007 and possibly earlier, university officials said, without approval from local or federal agencies. The concern is that if someone contracted the antibiotic-resistant version of the disease created in the lab, treatment might have been more difficult.”
  8. “The university learned of the stock of antibiotic-resistant strains after a round of university-wide lab inspections by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They began investigating Splitter’s lab in early 2008.
  9. “University officials said evidence gathered during the investigation contradicted Splitter’s claim that he was unaware of the work being done by his students.”
  10. “Splitter said part of the problem was understaffing in the university’s bio-safety program, which is charged with training scientists about regulations. At the time of the experiments, he said, there were only two people employed in the program and neither were trained biologists.”
  11. “In the past year, UW-Madison has hired five biological safety officers and a new director, said Bill Mellon, associate dean for research policy.”

Brucellosis, Lab Safety, Misconduct, Oversight, CDC, Academia, Drug Resistance, Scientist

 

Basken, Paul, “Scientist, Banned From Lab, Blames U. of Wisconsin for Biosafety Lapse,” May 19, 2010, Chronicle of Higher Education http://www.chroniclecareers.com/article/Scientist-Banned-From-Lab/65632/, last checked 10/30/2011.

  1. “University of Wisconsin officials suspended a professor’s laboratory privileges over unapproved tests involving an infectious disease, and said they’ve sent a strong message about accountability for hazardous materials.”
  2. “The five-year ban on hands-on lab work “does not restrict other people from submitting grants; it doesn’t restrict me from being an investigator on a grant; it doesn’t restrict me from working with others on grants or on science,” Dr. Splitter, a tenured professor of pathobiological sciences and a veterinarian, told The Chronicle.”
  3. “The case, which dates back to a routine inspection of Dr. Splitter’s lab by federal officials nearly three years ago, has garnered national attention in the past week as an example of concerns that the government may not be doing enough to guard against accidental or intentional spreads of pandemic disease.”
  4. “In the case of Dr. Splitter, the work involved the pursuit of a vaccine for brucellosis, a disease that humans contract from farm animals. Its effects are usually limited to chronic flu-like symptoms, though complications make it fatal in about 3 percent of cases. The disease infects about 500,000 people a year, mostly in developing countries, where the months-long process of treatment with antibiotics can be prohibitive.”
  5. “Ensuing investigations, which involved interviews of Dr. Splitter’s graduate students by federal inspectors and a nine-month closure of his lab, led to an agreement with federal officials last October in which the university paid the $40,000 fine. The university disclosed this month its decision to suspend Dr. Splitter’s laboratory privileges for a five-year period, ending in 2013. (He has not been allowed in his lab since 2008 because of the investigation, so the university is counting those years as part of his suspension.)”
  6. “William S. Mellon, associate dean for research policy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison Graduate School, said the university acted to penalize Dr. Splitter after concluding that Dr. Splitter was aware that new federal rules imposed after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States required him to seek specific government approval for his work with antibiotic-resistant genes.”
  7. “It appears, Mr. Mellon said, that Dr. Splitter—who has spent 32 years at the University of Wisconsin and is one of only about five experts worldwide working on a vaccine for brucellosis—simply never accepted the new requirements imposed on researchers. “Those are hard transitions to make—I understand that,” Mr. Mellon said.”
  8. “Investigations, both by federal officials and by outside analysts hired by the university, found the campus’s Institutional Biosafety Committee ‘was an organization in disarray,’ Dr. Splitter said.”
  9. “Mr. Mellon said he recognized that the case highlighted some shortcomings in the university’s operations and that the university has responded, hiring five new biological-safety officers and a new director for the operation. He said it’s ‘silly,’ however, for Dr. Splitter to deny his own responsibility.”
  10. “One of the graduate students, discussing the case with The Chronicle on the condition he not be identified, said the case pointed out the confusion over regulations and the hassles that await him if he decides to continue working with hazardous agents.”
  11. “The university’s penalty against Dr. Splitter became public the same week the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published an analysis suggesting that the more restrictive biosafety laws imposed after the 2001 attacks had led to far fewer published studies in the field and accelerated the rate of researchers turning to other fields of study.”

Brucellosis, Lab Safety, Misconduct, Oversight, CDC, Academia, Drug Resistance, Scientist

 

Raghunath, D., “New Metallo β-lactamase NDM-1”, Published November 2010, Indian Journal of Medical Research, Vol. 132 Issue 5, pg.478-481.

  1. “The métallo ß-lactamases (MBL) are the more versatile enzymes that can convert the host bacteria into almost total ß-lactam insusceptibil.” (pg.478)
  2. “The first bacterial isolate carrying the MBL later designated blaNOM-1 was a Klebsiella pneumonia urinary isolate from a patient with insignificant bacteria along with other multi-resistant bacteria from wound swabs.” (pg.478)
  3. “The NDM-1 gene is normally carried on a variety of plasmids along with other resistance factors. The bacteria also showed broad antibiotic resistance to all classes except colistin and ciprofloxacin.” (pg.478)
  4. “Rarely the gene was integrated into the chromosome. The sequencing of the gene showed that it was a new enzyme unrelated to hitherto known MBLs.” (pg.478)
  5. “NDM-1 confers on its host bacteria almost all ß lactam resistance and is accompanied by extensive antibiotic resistance. Such bacteria would be difficult to eliminate in clinical situations.” (pg.478)
  6. “Briefly, blaNDM-1 is a novel MBL with ability to confer resistance to almost all the ß lactams.” (pg.478)
  7. “A number of isolates from nine locations in India, eight cities in Pakistan and Dhaka, Bangladesh have been confirmed to carry NDM-1 (by PCR) indicating that the plasmid is perhaps quite widely distributed in the subcontinent. While this fact leads credence to the ‘Indian’ origin, it may not be necessarily so.” (pg.478)
  8. “However, the statement blaNDM-1 is widespread in the Indian environment is true.” (pg.479)
  9. “A heated debate in Indian professional and media circles is the assertion of the authors that patients from the West who would travel to the Indian sub-continent for elective surgery are at risk of post-operative infections due to bacteria carrying NDM-l resulting in higher treatment costs.” (pg.479)
  10. “This would negate any economy that would accrue to the NHS from contracted outsourcing of elective surgery to ‘countries such as India’.” (pg.479)
  11. “Septicaemia caused by a bacterium carrying NDM-1 would be well nigh impossible to treat if it has the accompanying resistances. However, the mere presence of the organism in the environment would not translate to infection if control measures are in position, as they would be, in the major corporate hospitals that cater to medical tourism.” (pg.479)
  12. “The National (UK) Resistance Alert in vol 3 (4) of the Health Protection Report (referred to 28) in this paper warns about carbapenemases but does not mention about the MBL blaNDM-1. However, a fresh alert specifically mentioning blaNDM-1 has been issued on July 3, 2009.” (pg.479)
  13. “There has been little evidence of clonal spread of NDM-1 bearing E.coli or K.pneumoniae except in the case of the isolates within Haryana.” (pg.479)
  14. “The epidemiology of the focus has not been systematically studied either. This needs to be done soon.” (pg.479)
  15. “The prescription habits, lack of infection control and easy access to even top line antibiotics add up to a dismal scenario prompting observers to write an ‘obituary’ to antibiotic treatment.” (pg.479)
  16. “These factors along with poor sanitation and personal hygiene foster the generation of resistant bacteria and their dissemination.” (pg.480)
  17. “The belief that multi-resistant pathogens are physically hampered and incapable of surviving in nature is no longer valid. Numerous instances of hospital generated or strains acclimatized to high levels of environmental antibiotic pressures living and spreading ‘merrily’ in the community are now known.” (pg.480)

NDM-1, India, Drug Resistance

 

Editors, ”U.S. Awards Contract For Radiation Treatment Work’‘. GSN. Sept. 7, 2010. http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20100907_7386.php

  1. “Funding from the department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is to be used to develop a medical treatment which uses myeloid progenitor cells, which can develop into any type of blood cell. The medication, CLT-008, is intended to foster the growth of and assist the body’s progenitor cells, according to an agency release.”
  2. “The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority also approved millions of dollars in new funding for additional work on a treatment for plague and tularemia — two disease agents classified as potential bioterrorism threats, according to a press release.”
  3. “The antibiotic could be used against tularemia and plague infections as well as more common illnesses such as pneumonia that are growing increasingly resistant to antibiotics.”
  4. “”This new antibiotic is part of our push against antibiotic resistance for certain bacterial infections, and at the same time could provide a new treatment for plague and tularemia biothreats””

Bioterrorism, Biosafety, Public Health, Emergency Response, Pharma, Drug Resistance, Biodevelopment, Biotechnology, Quarantine

 

Department of Health and Human Services, “Screening Framework Guidance for Providers of Synthetic Double-Stranded DNA”. October 2010. http://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/legal/guidance/syndna/Pages/default.aspx

  1. “Synthetic biology is not constrained by the requirement of using existing genetic material and this has great potential to be used to generate organisms, both currently existing and novel, including pathogens that could threaten public health, agriculture, plants, animals, the environment, or material.”
  2. “Following the Guidance is voluntary, though many specific recommendations serve to remind providers of their obligations under existing regulations”
  3. “…synthesis obviates the need for access to the naturally occurring agents or naturally occurring genetic material from these agents, thereby greatly expanding the potential availability of these agents.”
  4. “Providers should establish a comprehensive and integrated screening framework that includes both customer screening and sequence screening, as well as follow-up screening when customer and/pr sequence screening raises concern.”
  5. “The ongoing development of best practices in this area is commendable and encouraged, particularly in light of the continued advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis technologies and the accelerated rate of sequence submissions to public databases such as the National Institutes of Health’s GenBank. However, due to the complexity of determining pathogenicity and because research in this area is ongoing and many such agents are not currently encompassed by regulations in the U.S., generating a comprehensive list of such agents to screen against is not currently feasible and hence is not provided in this Guidance.”
  6. “Many DNA sequences encode genes that are required to maintain normal cellular physiology, otherwise know as “house-keeping genes.” These “house-keeping genes” are highly conserved between pathogenic and non-pathogenic species. Screening methodologies that recognize highly conserved sequences such as “house-keeping genes” as positive “hits” for “sequences of concern” offer little biosecurity benefit and may impede the screening efforts. Such methodologies would produce a larger number of “hits” adding extra burden for screeners and potentially resulting in actual “sequences of concern” being overlooked. Additionally, such a system may hamper scientific research by falsely assigning sequences from closely related microbes as “sequences of concern””

Personnel Reliability, Biosecurity, Synthetic Biology, Drug Resistance

2011

Cheng, Maria, “Researchers find superbug gene in New Delhi water,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, April 7, 2011. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_MED_INDIA_SUPERBUG?SITE=CACRU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Last Checked April 9, 2011.

  1. “A gene that can turn many types of bacteria into deadly superbugs was found in about a quarter of water samples taken from drinking supplies and puddles on the streets of New Delhi, according to a new study.”
  2. “Experts say it’s the latest proof that the new drug-resistance gene, known as NDM-1, named for New Delhi, is widely circulating in the environment – and could potentially spread to the rest of the world.”
  3. “Bacteria armed with this gene can only be treated with a couple of highly toxic and expensive antibiotics. Since it was first identified in 2008, it has popped up in a number of countries, including the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada and Sweden.”
  4. “Last fall, British scientists analyzed more than 200 water samples from central New Delhi, including public tap water and water that collected in the streets. They found the superbug gene in two of the drinking water samples and 51 of the street samples. Researchers found the gene in 11 different types of bacteria, including those that cause dysentery and cholera.”
  5. “Mark Toleman, a senior research fellow at Cardiff University and one of the study authors, said the superbug gene was being spread through New Delhi’s water supply, but that experts didn’t know how many people were being sickened by it. He guessed about a half million people in New Delhi are now carrying the superbug gene naturally in their gut bacteria.”
  6. “Indian officials called the study “unsupported” and denied the gene was a public health threat. They cited a random sample of nearly 2,000 women in a New Delhi hospital which they said showed no sign of it.
  7. “We know that such bacteria with genes are in the atmosphere everywhere,” said V.M. Katoch, director-general of the Indian Council of Medical Research. “This is a waste of time,” he said. “The study is creating a scare that India is a dangerous country to visit. We are condemning it.”
  8. “Since the superbug gene was found in the U.K. last year, British officials say there have been about 70 cases of it in the U.K. including a small hospital cluster.”
  9. “‘We have a vested interest in sorting out sanitation problems in India,” Toleman said, adding the West should invest more money in clean water projects in Asia. ‘Otherwise (superbugs) could filter out from Asia and will spread through the world.’”

NDM-1, Drug Resistance, India

 

Chan, Dr Margaret, “Combat Drug Resistance: No Action Today Means No Cure Tomorrow,” World Health Organization, April 6, 2011 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2011/whd_20110407/en/   Last Checked 9/5/2011

  1. “In the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated.”
  2. “The development of resistance is a natural biological process that will occur, sooner or later, with every drug.”
  3. “We have assumed that miracle cures will last forever, with older drugs eventually failing only to be replaced by newer, better and more powerful ones.”
  4. “For some diseases, like malaria, our options are very limited as we have only a single class of effective drugs- artemisinin-based combination therapies- with which to treat more than 200 million falciparum cases each year.”
  5. “While TB deaths are declining, in just the past year nearly half a million people developed multidrug-resistant TB, and a third of them died as a result.”
  6. “Irrational and inappropriate use of antimicrobials is by far the biggest driver of drug resistance.”
  7. “In several parts of the world, more than 50% in tonnage of all antimicrobial production is used in food-producing animals.”

Drug Resistance, WHO, Malaria, Tuberculosis

 

Lubick, Naomi, “Tools for Tracking Antibiotic Resistance“, Environmental Health Perspectives. May 2011.

  1. ““Misuse of antibiotics is obviously what creates the basic factors that produce drug resistance,” says Mario Raviglione” (Pg. 2)
  2. “Agricultural use of human drugs adds to the threat of drug resistance.” (Pg. 2)
  3. “They also have identified antimicrobial resistance genetic material in treated waste effluent and tap water in Michigan and Ohio,25,26 and researchers in Sweden recently documented multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli in the waste of migrating birds in the Arctic” (Pg. 2)
  4. “In particular, monitoring is now lacking. “If anything, we don’t know enough about developing countries to understand the situation—what resistant bacteria are there?”” (Pg. 3)
  5. “This device, connected to the Internet or with databases preloaded, could use the sequence to identify the microbes present to the genus or even species level, then spot genes they might carry for resistance to certain drugs. The test could potentially even predict the effectiveness of specific drugs in individual patients.” (Pg. 4)

Public Health, Bioterrorism, Drug Resistance, E. coli, NDM-1

 

Gallagher, James, “Tuberculosis Relative Could Be New Vaccine”, BBC News, September 4, 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14761366 Last checked 9/6/2011

  1. “It is one of the top 10 leading causes of death, according to the World Health Organization, killing 1.7 million people each year.”
  2. “The BCG vaccine has variable results. It has been shown to be between 0% and 80% effective in different parts of the world.”
  3. “There are also potential problems giving the live vaccine to some of the most at risk patients- those with HIV.”

Tuberculosis, Vaccination, Drug Resistance, WHO

 

Cooney, Peter, “Tick-borne Parasite Infecting Blood Supply: CDC,” Yahoo Health, September 5, 2011 http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/us_parasite_blood Last Checked 9/6/2011

  1. “A tick-borne infection known as Babesiosis, which can cause severe disease and even death, is becoming a growing threat to the U.S. blood supply”
  2. “There are currently no diagnostic tests approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that can detect the infection before people donate blood”
  3. “Of the 162 cases of Babesia infection caused by blood transfusion between 1979 and 2009, nearly 80 percent occurred between 2000 and 2009”

Drug Resistance, CDC

 

Rice, Sabriya, “MRSA: Protect Your Kid from a Superbug”, CNN News, September 6, 2011 http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/01/health/child-mrsa-infections/index.html Last Checked 9/6/2011

  1. “Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA is a type of staph bacteria that does not respond to commonly used antibiotic treatments.”
  2. “This type of infection has been a problem in hospital setting for many years, but starting around 2000, it began steadily making its way into the lives of otherwise healthy people, especially children who are not typically at risk for the fast-moving bacteria.”
  3. “Dr. Patrick Romano, senior author of a new report that found the number of children hospitalized with MRSA infection, mostly acquired from within the community has more than doubled since 2000.”
  4. “Dr. Romano states, ‘MRSA really started as a bacterium that was seen in hospitals among high-risk patients. But during the last decade we saw it spread to the general population.’”
  5. “According to the CDC, they estimate there are approximately 10,800 deaths in the U.S. each year caused by staph, of which 5,500 are inked to MRSA.”

Drug Resistance, CDC

 

Gallagher, James, “NDM-1 Superbug Enzymes ‘Photo fit’ Taken,BBC News, September 6, 2001 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14788046 Last Checked 9/6/2011

  1. “The structure of the protein which stops some of medicine’s most powerful antibiotics working has been determined by researchers.”
  2. “The protein has larger ‘jaws’ which allow it to attack more antibiotics than other enzymes.” *”Carbapenem antibiotics are considered the last line of defense against resistant bacteria. However, some are now resistant even to these drugs.”
  3. “Bacteria with a gene for New Delhi metallo beta lactamase (NDM-1) are able to produce an enzyme which breaks antibiotics down.”
  4. “The way bacteria freely exchange genes between themselves, and even between species, means this resistance gene could spread to other disease-causing bacteria.”
  5. “Professor Sharon Peacock, a member of the Medical Research Council Infections and Immunity Board, said: ‘identifying the structure of NDM-1 is a crucial step towards ensuring that drug development is based on a sound understanding of the mechanism of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.’”

NDM-1, Drug Resistance, India

 

Foley, Michelle, “Moffitt Cancer Center researchers use new tool to counter multiple myeloma drug resistanceEurek Alert. Sept. 9, 2011. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-09/hlmc-mcc090911.php

  1. “The research team has employed a method called Liquid Chromatography Multiple Reaction Monitoring (LC-MRM) to monitor proteins determined to be involved in acquired drug resistance. This was based on the prior myeloma research conducted at Moffitt by William S. Dalton, Ph.D., M.D., Moffitt’s CEO and center director, and colleagues.”

Drug Resistance, Public Health

 

Martin, David, “MRSA in U.S. Becoming Resistant to Over the Counter Ointment,” CNN Health, September 14, 2011 http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/14/mrsa-in-u-s-becoming-resistant-to-over-the-counter-ointment/ Last Checked 9/14/2011

  1. “Frequent use of over-the-counter anti-bacterial ointments in the United States may be leading to a new, antimicrobial resistant strain of MRSA, a study published Wednesday in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s monthly peer-reviewed journal.”
  2. “Resistance to bacitracin and neomycin was only found in USA300, a type of MRSA found in the United States.”
  3. “It use to be mainly transmitted in hospitals but is now increasingly acquired in community settings like athletic facilities. For some a MRSA infection can be deadly.”
  4. “MRSA resulted in 278,000 hospitalizations and more than 18,000 deaths in 2005, according to one study, with most of those infections coming from health care facilities. An estimated 1.5% of the U.S. populations – more than 4 million Americans – are now carriers of the bacteria.” *“MRSA is resistant to common antibiotics like penicillin and amoxicillin.”
  5. “The USA300 strain of MRSA can still be treated with vancomycin and other drugs, but doctors in the United States should be aware ‘the ointment therapy may not be effective in USA300 infections,’ Masahiro Suzuki said.”

Drug Resistance, Public Health

 

Paddock, Catharine, “Resistant TB Spreading In Europe At Alarming Rate, WHO,Medical News Today, September 15, 2011 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/234376.php  Last Checked 9/15/2011

  1. “Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis is a disease that could cause a pandemic in Western Europe and kill thousands of people if health authorities fail to tackle it properly.”
  2. “‘TB is an old disease that never went away, and now it is evolving with a vengeance.’”
  3. “Zsuzsanna Jakab said complacency has allowed the disease to resurge and it must be tackled now to avoid huge human and economic costs.”
  4. “TB is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria that gives rise to over 9 million new cases worldwide every year and nearly 2 million deaths. It is the leading cause of death among curable infectious diseases.”
  5. “WHO declared TB a global emergency in 1993.”
  6. “However, the cause for the current alarm is the rising number of cases of drug-resistant TB, or MDR-TB (multi-drug resistant TB), which develops when the first-line drugs are misused or mismanaged.”
  7. “The concern is that the resistant forms will rise to pandemic proportions unless TB control is managed properly.”
  8. “The death rate for TB is about 7%: this can rise to 50% for the resistant forms, according to WHO figures that also show cases of MDR-TB and XDR-TB are spreading at the rate of around 440,000 new cases a year worldwide.”
  9. “These resistant forms of TB are much harder and costlier to treat. It can take two years or more, and cost up to 16,000 US dollars in drugs alone per patient. If the patient needs isolation care in a hospital, then the cost is in the hundreds of thousands.”
  10. “More than 80,000 of these annual cases of resistant TB occur in WHO’s European region, which covers 53 European and Central Asian countries.”

Tuberculosis, Drug Resistance, Public Health, WHO

 

AP, “Vietnam shuts some kindergartens to control outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease,” The Washington Post, September 26, 2011 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/hand-foot-and-mouth-disease-rages-in-vietnam-closing-kindergartens/2011/09/26/gIQAkBeNyK_story.html Last checked 10/5/2011

  1. “The Health Ministry says more than 2,000 new cases of hand, foot and mouth disease are being reported each week.”
  2. “In a typical year, the virus infects up to 15,000 children in Vietnam and kills 20 to 30 of them.”
  3. “A more severe strain called enterovirus 71, or EV-71, was identified earlier in about a third of sampled cases. It can result in paralysis, brain swelling and death.”
  4. “No vaccine exists, but the illness is typically mild and most children recover quickly. The disease is caused by enteroviruses in the same family as polio.”

Drug Resistance

 

Singer, Stacy, “First Case of Dengue Fever Reported in Palm Beach County,” The Palm Beach Post, October 13, 2011, http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/first-case-of-dengue-fever-reported-in-palm-1911593.html Last Checked 10/19/2011

  1. “There are no medications available, only supportive care, nor is there a vaccine, said health department spokesman Tim O’Connor.”
  2. “‘They won’t be doing mass aerial spraying,’ O’Connor said. ‘They are doing less spraying. But they work very closely with us and respond very quickly.’”
  3. “Other mosquito-borne illnesses, such as West Nile encephalitis, have not turned up locally, though northern Florida is seeing a spike in cases, he said.”
  4. “The county is using trucks to spray the area where the case was confirmed. That location is not being released because of privacy issues.”

Dengue, Drug Resistance, Public Health

 

White, Nicholas, “A Vaccine for Malaria,” The New England Journal of Medicine, October 18, 2011   http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1111777 Last Checked 10/19/2011

  1. “It is becoming increasingly clear that we really do have the first effective vaccine against a parasitic disease in humans.”
  2. “If there are no unforeseen disasters, the RTS, S/AS01 Plasmodium falciparum malaria vaccine should become available in just over 3 years.”
  3. “The World Health Organization (WHO) has already taken the unusual step of indicating that it could recommend this first malaria vaccine for use in some African countries as early as 2015, depending on the full phase 3 trial results that will become available in 2014.”
  4. “The vaccine has been developed by a public–private partnership between GlaxoSmithKline and the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) Malaria Vaccine Initiative, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, primarily for use in infants and young children in sub-Saharan Africa.”
  5. “In this issue of the Journal, the RTS,S Clinical Trials Partnership provides an interim report of a large, multicenter phase 3 trial of this vaccine.”
  6. “A total of 15,460 children in two age categories — 6 to 12 weeks and 5 to 17 months — were enrolled.”
  7. “The report describes vaccine efficacy against P. falciparum malaria in the first 6000 of 8923 children in the older age category, together with an evaluation of the first 250 cases of severe malaria from the two age groups.”
  8. “The very low rate of death from malaria in this large trial (only 10 deaths directly attributed to malaria) testifies to the benefits of providing early diagnosis and effective anti-malarial treatment.”
  9. “An assessment of an 18-month booster dose will not be available until 2014.”

Vaccination, Malaria, Drug Resistance, Africa, WHO

 

AP,Spread of Superbug Curbed,” IOL News, October 20, 2011 http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/spread-of-superbug-curbed-1.1161297 Last Checked October 25, 2011

  1. “The further spread of the antibiotic resistant NDM-1 enzyme has been limited.”
  2. “Information on the patient’s health was not immediately available from the department and the NICD.”
  3. “The hospital was commended for the way it identified the NDM-1strain promptly and prevented it from spreading. Measures included screening around 400 people, isolating affected patients, strengthening infection control measures and commissioning an independent audit.”
  4. “A co-ordinating outbreak response team was formed that would meet regularly to monitor and redirect response to the outbreak when needed. A monitoring system within public and private sector would also be set up.”

NDM-1, Drug Resistance, Vaccination

 

Reporters, “Universal Flu Vaccine Could Be Available by 2014, Scientists Say,” International Business Times, October 24, 2011 http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/236661/20111024/universal-flu-vaccine-influenza-h1n1-h5n1-bird-swine-strains.htm Last Checked October 31, 2011

  1. “A universal flu vaccine could be available as soon as 2014, if scientists have their way.”
  2. “That goal has eluded researchers for years, because different strains of the flu virus circulate each season, forcing scientists to predict upcoming strains and patients to get a new vaccine every fall.”
  3. “The efficacy of the vaccine varies from year to year, but it is usually between 30 and 60 percent effective, because there is no way to identify all possible strains, and because the strains that are prevalent when the vaccines are manufactured won’t necessarily be prevalent when flu season rolls around.”
  4. “The need for a universal flu vaccine is becoming increasingly urgent as new, deadlier flu strains emerge.”
  5. “This summer, the World Health Organization announced a resurgence of H5N1, or bird flu, in Asia.”
  6. “The H5N1 strain remains uncommon because it has not yet mutated into a form that can spread directly from person to person, but it is remarkably serious in people who do get it, with a fatality rate of nearly 60 percent.”
  7. “‘It’s almost inevitable that another pandemic will come,’ Antonio Lanzavecchia, an immunologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, told the Los Angeles Times.”

Vaccination, Flu, Drug Resistance

 

 

 

 

 

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