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Tag: antibiotics

  • Bubonic Plague: 47 Dead in Madagascar

    Bubonic plague has killed 47 people in Madagascar, and health officials fear the death toll will only rise. The outbreak–similar to the Black Death that invaded Europe during medieval times–is spreading to the capital, Antananarivo.

    The health ministry suspects as many as 138 cases have cropped up since the first of the year. Two are now infected in Antananarivo. One isn’t expected to survive. Health workers are utilizing a pest control campaign throughout areas of the city considered to be slums.

    “Two hundred households have been disinfected this month,” Philemon Tafangy, who is the health ministry’s secretary general, said.

    Those who have come in contact with people infected with bubonic plague have been put on strong doses of antibiotics in an attempt to squelch further spread of the disease.

    Bubonic plague is spread by fleas–coming from rats. Humans can contract the disease if they are bitten by a flea that carries the disease.


    The bubonic form prompts swelling of the lymph node, but can be treated with antibiotics. The pneumonic version, affecting the lungs, can be spread from person to person through coughing and can kill within 24 hours.

    The U.N. health agency fears that because Madagascar has a high resistance to insecticides that target fleas, people there are at much greater rusk of contracting the illness.

    The last case of bubonic plague in Antananarivo was 10 years ago, but Christophe Rogier of the island’s Institut Pasteur believes this outbreak may be related.

    “It is possible that the plague continued to survive in Antananarivo for 10 years without touching humans,” with the virus restricted to its rat population, he said. “Rats are a natural reservoir of the plague, and they also survive the plague.”

    Although an outbreak of bubonic plague that has killed 47 people is definitely alarming, there is no reason to panic about it increasing to pandemic proportions. The Black Death is estimated to have killed some 25 million people across Europe in the Middle Ages–long before antibiotics were available.

  • Miley Cyrus Denies Drug Overdose

    Miley Cyrus Denies Drug Overdose

    Twerking sensation Miley Cyrus has denied rumors that her recent illness was the result of a drug overdose, and asserts that she is “the poster child for good health.”

    While addressing talk that her recent hospital stint was actually due to illicit drug use, Cyrus insisted that this was not the case, during a press conference at London’s O2 Arena Tuesday, in anticipation of the relaunch of the European leg of her Bangerz tour. “I didn’t have a drug overdose,” Cyrus explained, adding, “I took some shitty antibiotics that a doctor gave me for a sinus infection and I had a reaction.”

    The potty-mouthed superstar, 21, commented, “I’m probably the only one on this tour who doesn’t drink or smoke before a show, as I take this really seriously. It’s almost like being an athlete being up here, because if someone was fucked up, they definitely couldn’t do my show.”

    Cyrus attributes her recovery to vitamins and honey, and called her hospital stay “the most miserable two weeks of (her) life.” The pop idol made her rounds on social media as she prepared to return to her Bangerz stage:


    Cyrus, back in form, at the O2 Arena in London Tuesday:

    Cyrus was forced to cancel the last of her North American Bangerz tour dates after falling ill in mid-April due to an extremely adverse reaction of antibiotics. The singer ended up being hospitalized for several days, and tour dates had to be rescheduled. It’s been speculated that Cyrus’ loss of her beloved dog Floyd might have compounded her illness. Just before getting sick, Cyrus had apologized in advance to Boston fans for her April 2nd gig. “I’m sorry in advance if I am not myself tomorrow Boston. I will try my best to be my best,” Cyrus said.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Zinc Supplements Studied For The Common Cold

    Although Americans are hit with 1 billion colds each year, most view it as some invisible enemy to which they’ll inevitably succumb.

    We wait until the running nose and sore throat symptoms set in and then head to our local pharmacy to self-medicate or hit the nearest urgent care so we can try to make it to work the next day. However, a new review from the Canadian Medical Association offers possible alternatives that might not be part of our current five point plan for the onset of sick season.

    What’s the potential panacea? Some studies are looking to zinc and hand washing.

    That’s right. To avoid colds, results from 67 trials showed that viral spread was reduced by a good soapy skin scouring. They also indicated that some of the kids who took zinc didn’t catch colds as commonly as other children. In fact, the same study suggests that some of the existing go-to protocol on which many rely may not be very helpful after all. Probiotics are still considered helpful to ward off sickness, and ibuprofen or acetaminophen will assuage the aches once it’s too late. However, traditional remedies like Echinacea, ginseng, vapour rubs, and cough medicine were found to have fewer clear benefits.

    Additionally, even the effectiveness of Vitamin C was questioned by the study. Dr. Michael Allan, a family doctor and associate professor in the department of family medicine at the University of Alberta, claimed that Vitamin C was found to have “no meaningful benefit in the average patient,” and went on to say, “The average adult would need to use vitamin C for 10 or 15 years to prevent one cold.”

    Okay, so those herbs might not be as helpful as we thought; but they certainly won’t hurt you to take when the sniffles initiate. What will do more harm than good is taking antibiotics for a cold.

    Why? First, antibiotics won’t work on viruses. Simply put, it all boils down to what kind of microbe is eating you at the moment. Antibiotics are meant to maim bacteria (which are living things); but when we catch the common cold, it’s a virus (non-living thing) causing our illness. But, since they can’t be killed, that’s why you have to just wait for it to pass and manage the symptoms. If that was too boring to follow, use this reductive analogy instead: using antibiotics against viruses is like trying to kill an android with arsenic. It does not compute.

    Also, it allows bacteria that are just hanging out and minding their own business in our bodies to mutate into super Chuck Norris bacteria. Then we’re really in trouble. Enough from the soapbox, though. Let’s look to the resolutions!

    How helpful could this Zinc be?

    It depends. Tests with zinc sulphate supplements of 10 mg or 15 mg a day resulted in fewer colds for the zinc group versus the control. However, the devil is always in the details. While those studies did indicate that zinc lessened the time adults spent sick, it was by a whopping one and a half days… and even that comes from an experiment where adults took a 23-mg zinc gluconate lozenge every two hours.

    Ultimately, the results were mixed. Allan said that, “kids in these studies did not get a benefit, but adults did,” adding that Zinc should never be used via nasal spray because “a few cases have linked it to the loss of smell.”

    Allan concedes, “I certainly don’t want to be telling parents to put their children on zinc every day to prevent the common cold. The research is not very robust.”

    In the end, the preventative hand-washing is always good advice, while the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” saying seems best with respect to any medicinal plan (especially when it comes to experimenting on your kids). If a seasonal cold is really just an annoyance your current herbal remedies resolve pretty well, it may or may not be worth trying out a new supplement like Zinc. But if you are going to give it a go, Dr. Oz suggests starting the supplements the day you begin to get symptoms and keeping it up until you’re fully recovered.

    Cold symptoms usually end between 7 and 10 days. Anyone still suffering after that, may find that a medical follow up is the best route.

    Images via Youtube

  • Antibiotic Overuse Could Create Global Health Crisis, Shows Study

    For years now, the medical community, including the U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have been warning that antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise. The problem is becoming serious as antibiotic use has become widespread and commonplace, with bacteria evolving resistances at an ever-greater rate.

    A new study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine has now shown that while human overuse of antibiotics is a large contributor to the problem, the use of antibiotics for livestock and agriculture is overwhelmingly the cause of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

    The study found that 80% of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are for agricultural and aquacultural uses. The drugs are commonly fed or injected into livestock in order to increase food production.

    “It’s about increasing the efficiency of food so you can reduce the amount of grain you feed the cattle,” said Aidan Hollis, co-author of the study and an economica professor at the University of Calgary. “It’s about giving antibiotics to baby chicks because it reduces the likelihood that they’re going to get sick when you cram them together in unsanitary conditions.”

    The study’s authors warn, however, that a continued, unchecked increase in the number of antibiotic immune bacteria could lead to a global health crisis. Hollis suggests in the paper that a tax on antibiotic use for non-human purposes could help curb the problem, believing that a ban on agricultural use of antibiotics may be hard to implement.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took up the issue earlier this month, announcing its plan to phase out the use of some antibiotics (the ones most important for humans) in food animals. The FDA’s plan calls for pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily re-label their antibiotics to prevent unnecessary use on farms.

    “These methods are obviously profitable to the farmers, but that doesn’t mean it’s generating a huge benefit,” said Hollis. “In fact, the profitability is usually quite marginal.

    “The real value of antibiotics is saving people from dying. Everything else is trivial.”

  • FDA to Tackle Antibiotic Use in Food Animals

    The practice of using antibiotics in farm animals has been debated for decades now. Farms will often put antimicrobials into the feed or water of animals bound for the dinner table to enable faster growth using less feed. Critics have argued that these antibiotics could have a dangerous effect on humans who eat the animals, and the U.S. government is now getting involved.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced a plan to phase out the use of “medically important” antimicrobial drugs in food animals. The plan would end the use of such drugs for animal food production and tightly control them for veterinary uses.

    Specifically, the FDA’s plan calls for animal pharmaceutical companies to revise the use conditions of their products on product labels. In addition, the FDA would like to end the over-the-counter status of such drugs, meaning veterinarian approval would be needed for disease treatment with the drugs. The FDA is calling for pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily implement these changes, and is giving companies three years to transition their products to comply.

    “Implementing this strategy is an important step forward in addressing antimicrobial resistance,” said Michael Taylor, deputy commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine at the FDA. “The FDA is leveraging the cooperation of the pharmaceutical industry to voluntarily make these changes because we believe this approach is the fastest way to achieve our goal. Based on our outreach, we have every reason to believe that animal pharmaceutical companies will support us in this effort.”

    The medically important drugs targeted by the plan are those also used to treat humans. Researchers in recent years have seen a rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The phenomenon is caused primarily by the overuse of antibiotics, which creates pressure for resistant bacteria to evolve and thrive. The CDC estimated this year that at least 23,000 American each year die from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

  • CDC Recommends Limits For Antibiotic Use in Children

    The U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week issued a new report and guidance urging physicians to cut back on antibiotic use in children.

    Specifically, the CDC has called on doctors to cut back on prescribing antibiotics for upper respiratory conditions such as ear infections, sinus infections, and sore throats. Many of these infections are caused by viruses, meaning that antibiotics would not help. The agency estimates that upwards of 10 million children in the U.S. could be at risk for side effects from unnecessary antibiotics.

    In addition to the added dangers to children, the CDC is once again warning the public about the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

    “Our medicine cabinet is nearly empty of antibiotics to treat some infections,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC. “If doctors prescribe antibiotics carefully and patients take them as prescribed we can preserve these lifesaving drugs and avoid entering a post-antibiotic era.”

    When exposed to antibiotics, bacteria is able evolve resistances to the medications. Overprescribing antibiotics could be helping these resistant bacteria strains thrive. The CDC warned back in September that up to 50% of antibiotic use is not needed or mis-prescribed. The agency estimates that 23,000 Americans die each year to infections that are resistant to antibiotics.

    “Many people have the misconception that since antibiotics are commonly used that they are harmless,” said Dr. Lauri Hicks, coauthor of the CDC’s new report. “Taking antibiotics when you have a virus can do more harm than good.”

    The CDC’s recommendations include steps that doctors can take to rule out viral infections and ensure that antibiotics are needed. The agency is also urging doctors to weigh the benefits of antibiotics against possible side effects (including promoting resistance) when prescribing the medications and to prescribe only the exact dose needed over the shortest period of time possible.

  • New Bird Flu Infects First Human

    New Bird Flu Infects First Human

    Zoonosis occurs when a disease or sickness in a non-human animal is transmitted to a human being. Approximately 61% of 1415 pathogenic infections to human beings are zoonotic. The first case of a bird-to-human transmission of infection came in China in 1996. Since its inception, the H5N1 flu strain has killed more than 600 people, most of those residing in Asia. Over those 17 years, however, there have only been a few cases of avian flu infecting human beings, perhaps the most infamous being the H1N1 pandemic which broke out in 2009-10. However, there are now reports of a new strain infecting a human being.

    In May of this year, a 20 year old Taiwanese woman was hospitalized after displaying flu-like symptoms – short of breath, a high fever, and severe coughing. Upon noting the symptoms, the doctors prescribed the woman Tamiflu and other antibiotics, and then sent her on her way. After the Taiwanese Centre for Disease Control studied the results of her throat-swab, doctors had cause to sound the alarm. The woman’s sickness was identified as the H6N1 strain of avian flu, a disease which had been present in chickens on the island since the 1970’s but had yet to become zoonotic.

    Due to the potential severity of the illness, Taiwanese officials began investigating the origins of the flu and whether or not it was present in people who had been in contact with the 20 year old patient. Officials could find no immediate cause as to why or how the woman obtained the virus considering she worked as a clerk in a butcher shop and had no contact with live birds. In questioning 36 of her closest contacts, doctors only discovered flu-like symptoms in 6 people, none of which were infected with the H6N1 strain.

    When investigating this particular strain even closer, doctors discovered unsettling news – the virus had undergone a mutation in its haemagglutinin, a binding protein, allowing it to bind to human cells. ‘‘The question again is what would it take for these viruses to evolve into a pandemic strain?’’ questioned virologist Marion Koopmans, who works for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands.

    Luckily, recent reports have been released which show progress being made toward developing effective antibodies and medicines to combat the bird flu. Swiss drug-maker Novartis and Rockville, Maryland biotech company Novavax have both conducted independent clinical trials in which they have seen successful results from vaccines engineered to actively combat the bird flu. The aim of the vaccine is to boost antibodies whose particular job would be to attack the H7 and N9 proteins which stick out from the rest of the bird virus. In the Novavax study, the vaccine produced antibodies fighting against the “H” protein at an 81% success rate and produced antibodies against the “N” protein at a 90% success rate.

    While none of the avian flu strains have yet to be transmitted from human-to-human, the threat always exists. The development of these new antibodies hopefully ensures that the end of the world will not be due to avian flu, but rather the zombie apocalypse, something we all know we truly want.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons