Researchers at Inserm/Strasbourg University have developed an antimicrobial film for implants. One of the biggest problems with implants is that they can provide ideal breeding grounds for pathogens, causing inflammation in the surrounding tissue and subsequent rejection of the implant. Often, this is avoided by prescribing patients antibiotics or coating implants in them, which of course have …
A few weeks ago, I came across this article that someone had posted to social media with the title “Your make-up could KILL you: Deadly meningitis bacteria discovered in products”. It turns out there are a lot of articles on the internet discussing the horrors of expired makeup, the most recent ones linking back to a …
Sanitation remains a problem in many developing countries across the globe. However, this issue goes much deeper than just delivering clean water to billions of people and treating sewage waste. The Conversation ran an article earlier this month on this topic. They bring up two important aspects of implementing water treatment programs in struggling countries. One …
Some antibiotics routinely used in the clinic are considered to have little side effects. Such is the case for cefprozil, a second generation cephalosporin. This relative safety may be true (to a certain degree) from the viewpoint of humans taking the antibiotic. However, it is not the case from our commensal microbes’ perspective. Our study, …
OK, so they are not actually gigantic bacteria. But this is just really a great idea: The Colosseum becomes a living artwork — powered by its own bacteria | Art and design | The Guardian Now the arena — or rather, the bacteria within it — is becoming a living artwork for the first time, over …
A study appearing yesterday in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy by Min-Suk Rhee et al. found that while triclosan hand soap did kill bacterial after 9 hours, most people wash their hands for about twenty seconds and then rinse the soap off. In these circumstances, the antibacterial properties of the soap won’t do anything. Triclosan works …
This seems like a really good opportunity for some interesting and critically important microbial diversity work: Novel Approaches to Characterizing and Tracking the Global Burden of Antimicrobial Resistance | Grand Challenges This link is to a call for proposals from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Antimicrobial Resistance. Specifically they write: We are soliciting …
Going through some old draft microBEnet posts and came across this one, “Taking Aim at Microbes on Farm Good Strategy for Food Safety | Food Safety News”. This is a nice article about microbiological control at food production facilities… but that doesn’t just focus on the (justifiably) scary antibotic resistance breeding ground angle. This article …
A new PLoS One article from Dorado-GarcÃa et al. on the effectiveness of certain countermeasures to antimicrobial resistance shows some encouraging results. The study used MRSA levels as a positive indicator for antimicrobial resistance in Dutch veal farms. There were three methods of reducing MRSA levels in the farms that were studied: one program used protocol-driven methods, one used …
I have been going through old files and notes and scanning some of the more interesting things. One thing I personally find fascinating are notes from talks from a whiles back. So I am going to post some of these notes – in a method I call “retroblogging”. Perhaps I will fake-live-tweet these past talks …