Superbug News and Research

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Effective hand hygiene key to reducing hospital-based infections

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a 30 second application of a six-step hand washing and hand rub regimen that could keep infections away.

From ESCMID 15 Apr 2019

Study finds ‘superbug’ in hands or nostrils of patients staying in the hospital

For decades, hospitals have worked to get doctors, nurses and others to wash their hands and prevent the spread of germs.

15 Apr 2019

How to fight ‘scary’ superbugs? Cooperation — and a special soap

Hospitals and nursing homes in California and Illinois are testing a surprisingly simple strategy against the dangerous, antibiotic-resistant superbugs that kill thousands of people each year: washing patients with a special soap.

12 Apr 2019

GARDP forms multi-actor partnerships to discover new antibiotics

Multi-actor partnership tests natural products and compound libraries for antibacterial activity Discovery efforts will focus on World Health Organization's priority pathogens The Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership is partnering with Calibr, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, in particular its location Helmholtz-Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland, and the University of Queensland's Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery in its efforts to develop and ensure new antibiotics are globally available to all patients who need them.

11 Apr 2019

Antibiotic levels in water and potential risk of drug-resistant bugs

A JRC report brings together data on antibiotic levels in water, showing that small concentrations have found their way into a range of Europe's waterbodies.

27 Mar 2019

New guidelines on clinical use of life-saving antibiotics

An international panel of the foremost researchers on infectious disease and antimicrobials has formed new guidelines on the use of polymyxins, a class of antibiotics employed as a last resort to treat deadly, drug-resistant bacteria.

11 Mar 2019

Study: Awareness campaigns are not sufficient to tackle superbug crisis in developing countries

In a landmark study of health behaviors in developing countries, Global Sustainable Development research at the University of Warwick has found that awareness campaigns alone are not enough to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use and, in fact, could risk making the superbug crisis worse.

26 Feb 2019

Kansas geologist reveals startling global spread of antibiotic-resistant microbes

A University of Kansas geologist's work in the remote High Arctic of Norway has exposed the startling global spread of antibiotic-resistant microbes -- including multidrug-resistant "superbugs" -- that could have dire implications for human health worldwide.

6 Feb 2019

Amprologix wins £1.2 million contract to tackle antimicrobial-resistant MRSA

Amprologix Limited, a University of Plymouth spinout company, has won a £1.2 million contract from the Department for Health and Social Care to accelerate development and scale up its lead antibiotic candidate to tackle antimicrobial resistant MRSA and related superbugs.

4 Feb 2019

Antibiotic-resistant superbugs have reached the Arctic

An international team of researchers has identified antibiotic-resistant genes (ARGs) in an area of the arctic that have spread from urban India.

28 Jan 2019

New antibiotic discovery heralds breakthrough in the fight against drug-resistant bacteria

A new antibiotic developed by a Flinders University researcher is being heralded as a breakthrough in the war against a drug resistant superbug.

18 Jan 2019

UC San Diego to conduct first U.S. clinical trial of intravenously administered bacteriophage therapy

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has accepted an Investigational New Drug application by physician-scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine to conduct the first U.S. clinical trial of an intravenously administered bacteriophage-based therapy.

9 Jan 2019

Study shows septin proteins detect and kill gut pathogen, Shigella

Using state-of-the art technologies to image human cells and study infection at the level of a single bacterial cell, the research team, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, has uncovered the strongest evidence yet that septins take Shigella prisoner.

13 Dec 2018

Boosting our defenses to fight Klebsiella infections

Although a relatively common infection, some bacteria that causes pneumonia can be particularly deadly. As a case in point, take Klebsiella pneumoniae, which has been included on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) list of infections that desperately need new treatments.

6 Dec 2018

Scientists move closer to gonorrhea vaccine after large-scale proteomic study

In a study of proteins historic in its scope, researchers at Oregon State University have pushed closer both to a vaccine for gonorrhea and toward understanding why the bacteria that cause the disease are so good at fending off antimicrobial drugs.

8 Nov 2018

Antibiotic resistance likely to kill 2.4 million across Europe, Australia and North America by 2050

Antibiotic resistance is one of the hottest concerns worldwide today and is likely to take back the human civilization to the pre-antibiotic era at this rate. A new report titled “Stemming the Superbug Tide”, has speculated that antibiotic resistant bugs are soon likely to kill over 90,000 Britons over the next three decades if it is not curbed now.

7 Nov 2018

Scientists discover cell adhesion mechanism used by mycoplasma genitalium

Researchers from the Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona and the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine have discovered the mechanism by which the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium) adheres to human cells.

29 Oct 2018

ANTRUK’s Annual Lecture sends out message on shortage of funds for antibiotic research

A national charity will use the 90th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin to call for a massive injection of funds into antibiotic research - or risk returning humanity to an age where people died from something as simple as a scratch.

17 Oct 2018

Doctors use bacteriophages to treat patient with multi-drug resistant bacterial infection

The married professors were spending their Thanksgiving holiday in Egypt when the husband, Thomas L. Patterson, Ph.D., got very sick very quickly, experiencing fever, nausea and a racing heartbeat. By the time Patterson was accurately diagnosed with a highly multi-drug resistant bacterial infection, he was near death.

4 Oct 2018

Superbugs emerging from skin bacteria on the increase

A new study has shown that some of the sub-strains of the bacteria that commonly live on our skin have become resistant to common infections – or in other words turned into superbugs. Infections with these strains thus could become untreatable with the antibiotics available and may turn life-threatening, warn researchers.

6 Sep 2018