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, …
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 …
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 was clicking around news stories and found this Huffington Post article called “How Much Bacteria is In Your Burger?” Here’s what they report: “…every sample of ground beef collected by researchers from supermarkets around the country contained enterococcus and/or nontoxin-producing E. coli, which indicate fecal contamination. In other words, all the beef had poop …
I have just discovered a nice microbiology themed podcast from the Society for General Microbiology. The podcast is linked to the “Microbe Post” blog and is called “Microbe Talk Extra”. Here is the most recent one on antimicrobials in water and the environment.
In response to studies showing that antibiotic resistance can spread through the food supply, the FDA has made some recent policy decisions about the use of antibiotics in livestock rearing. A public meeting will be held by the FDA on September 30, 2015, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Jefferson Auditorium, 14th and Independence …
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is finally cracking down on products that tap into the neurotic tendencies of extreme germophobes. In this recent Consumerist article, Chris Morran discusses the penalties Zadro Health Solutions and Angel Sales had to pay for false advertising of their disinfection products. Without a single lab experiment, we can already deduce …
I recently bought these shoes online. I happily broke them in immediately upon receiving them, a bit hastily. If I had paid a little more attention to the various paper slips in the box, I would have noticed the excitedly-worded “ANTIMICROBIAL ODOR CONTROL” advertisement. Alas, I did not notice this. Nowhere on the site did …