Journalist and Author
The subcontinent can cease fretting over the naming of that new bacterial resistance factor NDM, for New Delhi. There’s a newer resistance factor in town, and this one stigmatizes… Italy. Welcome, Verona integron-encoded metallo-beta-lactamase, or VIM. To be precise, VIM isn’t new — its very first identification was at the Verona University Hospital in 1999 […]
There are people in this world — I’m not pointing fingers — who have extra antibiotics hanging about their houses. Naturally, this would not be you, any of you, since you know that it’s important to finish prescriptions or risk the development of resistant bacteria. You wouldn’t forget to take your regularly scheduled doses. You […]
Nightmare scenario: New disease arises. It’s rare enough that there aren’t many known patients, and so it isn’t well-studied — and because it isn’t well-studied, there aren’t agreed-upon treatments or accurate tests for it, and there isn’t a good understanding of situations where the infected might pose an unusual risk to others. Situations, for instance, […]
The “third epidemic” of MRSA (drug-resistant staph) — the one that started in farm animals given antibiotics, and subsequently spread to humans — has been contentious since its emergence. This week there are several pieces of new news about it. They’re not likely to solve any of the disagreements, but they’re certainly interesting. Very quick […]
Just about a month ago, the disease-geek world was riveted by news of the “Indian superbug“: common bacteria carrying a newly recognized gene that confers profound multi-drug resistance, and that was linked to travel between Europe and South Asia, especially for medical tourism. The gene, which directs production of an enzyme called NDM-1 for short, […]
Odd but interesting fact: Scandinavia takes antibiotic resistance incredibly seriously. Denmark has one of the most thorough programs for preventing antibiotic misuse in agriculture; Norway has very tough regulations regarding antibiotic stewardship in hospitals (as captured in this AP story last year). Sweden has pressed the issue as well; drug resistance was a major issue […]
Drowning in work here, folks, which is a pity because there’s lots of news to talk about. Back soon. Meanwhile: I try not to do this very often, because most of what we have to talk about is so much more interesting than me — but my week at UGA, which is capped by an […]
Constant readers, I’m teaching this week at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and New Media Institute, so blogging will be light. If you’re in the Athens or Atlanta area, please come say hello, I’ll also be speaking publicly: Tuesday: 4 p.m., Room 175 of the University of Georgia’s Coverdell Center for Biomedical […]
(Constant readers: Apologies for the slow blogging. Casa Superbug’s little medical crisis from a week ago has recurred, and things are a bit distracting. Back to normal soon, I hope.) In public health, one of the numbers you hear most often — and especially so the past few years — is 36,000. That’s the number […]
I give you: the Singing Doctors! (via damagedcare.com): [HTML1]
The World Health Organization released a statement this afternoon, prompted by news of the NDM-1 multi-resistance gene. It’s worth taking a look: The agency recommends that countries around the world pay serious attention to the emergence of this resistance factor. WHO calls for broad action within countries, from hospital infection-control and antibiotic-stewardship programs, to increased […]
Sorry to drop out of sight, constant readers; a little medical emergency at Casa Superbug, but all better now. There are some new developments regarding the novel resistance factor NDM-1, which renders Gram-negative bacteria resistant to almost all antibiotics: Germany has announced its first identifications — plural, apparently. (Bloomberg News) Vietnam says it has also […]
One of the frustrations of being a working journalist and a blogger is that, when a big blog-story breaks, you’re likely already to be working on something else. And so it is, unfortunately, with NDM-1: I’m on a magazine assignment and will be off interviewing people when I should be blogging. (This s a great […]
There’s news today in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases of the further spread of a troubling new resistance problem that I first talked about in June: Gram-negative bacteria carrying a novel resistance factor that has been dubbed New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1. In writing about resistant bacteria, it’s difficult to avoid overusing superlatives — but […]
There’s good news today in the Journal of the American Medical Association: A 4-year study by the CDC and its partners in the Active Bacterial Core Surveillance System reports significant declines in invasive MRSA infections contracted in hospitals. The study, which covers 2005 through 2008, finds a decline of 9.4% per year among infections that […]
The ongoing fight over long-term Lyme disease treatment has to be one of the most ferocious in health care. If you don’t live in the Northeast or upper Midwest, Lyme disease may not be on your radar, so here’s a super-quick version: There are patients and physicians who say that Lyme disease symptoms persist following […]
I’m flattered to have as a regular reader Dr. Peter Davies, a professor of swine health and production in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Veterinary Population Medicine. (Disclosure: I worked part-time at U Minn from mid-2006 to mid-2010, but in a different school.) In a comment on my previous post, he points out — […]
The latest postings to the website of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases include a sad and very troubling letter from physicians in Lyon and Paris, reporting the death from necrotizing pneumonia of a previously healthy 14-year-old girl. That would be sad under any conditions, but here’s what makes the death so troubling: It appears […]
Ed Yong, an incisive and prolific science blogger-writer-communications officer, opened up his blog to the science-writing community earlier today, with this invitation: Every now and then, I get an email from someone who’s keen to get into science writing and wants to know how I started. Whenever I reply, and I always try to, I’m […]
A few years ago, I went to India on a reporting trip. When I came back, I had a troublesome cough. I figured I’d picked up a bronchitis aggravated by New Delhi’s smog-laden air, or by the dung smoke from the fires in the villages where I’d spent most of my time. The cough got […]