A new study published in BMJ Global Health has revealed that over 500,000 deaths associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could be averted each year with the effective use of existing vaccines and continued development of new vaccines to tackle priority pathogens. The modelling study, Global and regional burden of attributable and associated bacterial antimicrobial resistance avertable by vaccination, was carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Vaccine Institute, Korea (IVI) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and become resistant to medicines. The condition has been declared by WHO as one of the top ten global threats to global public health, associated with around 4.95 million deaths globally per year. Science has been playing catch-up to mitigate AMR due to the strain that was faced by health systems worldwide throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Using ...
Pictured: GSK headquarters office in Poland/iStock, Wirestock GSK has licensed out its Shigella vaccine candidate to LimmaTech Biologics, giving the Swiss biotech rights to further develop and eventually commercialize the quadrivalent bioconjugate investigational vaccine, the companies announced Thursday. LimmaTech is aiming to complete the Phase I/II clinical trial for this quadrivalent candidate and post data from this study within the year. The investigational Shigella shot joined GSK’s portfolio in 2015, when the pharma giant bought Swiss vaccine specialist GlycoVaxyn for $190 million. Aside from shigellosis, the disease caused by Shigella bacteria, GlycoVaxyn also handed over early-stage vaccines for pneumonia and infectious conditions caused by Pseudomonas bacteria and Staphylococcus aureus. LimmaTech spun out of this acquisition and started its operations in August of the same year. The clinical-stage biotech is focused on engineering complex carbohydrate molecules to come up with next-generation vaccine candidates. It has since signed partnerships with GSK for its Shigella and Klebsiella development programs. ...
Immune systems develop specific genes to combat common bacteria such as those found in food, new research shows. Previous theories have suggested that antimicrobial peptides – a kind of natural antibiotics – have a general role in killing a range of bacteria. However, the new study, published in Science, examined how the immune systems of fruit flies are shaped by the bacteria in their food and environment. The researchers, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of Exeter, found two peptides that each control a single bacterial species commonly encountered by the flies. Dr Mark Hanson (Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall) said, “We know that an animal’s food and environment determine the bacteria it encounters. This in turn shapes its ‘microbiome’ – the collection of microbes that live in and on its body – and our study shows how immune systems ...
The European Commission, the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA), and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have issued recommendations to prevent shortages of antibiotics. Drug shortages have become the norm in recent years, with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reporting 295 active shortages in the last quarter of 2022 and the EMA reporting that a shortage of cardiovascular medications is expected to continue until next year. The EMA has said that the EU has an adequate supply of oral antibiotics for the treatment of respiratory infections, if the demand remains comparable to previous years, as per a 17 July press release. Nonetheless, the agency has issued several recommendations to ensure robust preparedness. It has also announced plans to engage with marketing authorisation holders to increase production and continue to monitor supply and demand without resorting to stockpiling. In addition, the agency wants to increase ...
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) happens when microbes such as bacteria, viruses and fungi change over time and stop responding to medicine. Their failure to respond makes it harder to treat infections, potentially resulting in spread, serious illness or death. In today’s AMR drug discovery sector, pharmaceutical companies find it challenging to profit from new innovative drugs because, rightfully, hospitals reserve these drugs for only advanced cases. As a result, the current approach reduces the financial incentive to make these drugs, contributing to global concern about AMR infections and their impact. Legal guidance on AMR returns On 27 April, the Pasteur Act, which deals with AMR and is sold as a bipartisan legislation to combat superbugs, was reintroduced into the US Senate. A core focus, this time around, is to jumpstart antibiotic development with a new payment model for novel treatments alongside improving how existing antibiotics are prescribed. ...
A new research perspective was published in Oncoscience (Volume 10) on May 27, 2023, entitled, “Think outside the box – atypical infections in chronic sinusitis.” Inflammations of the paranasal sinuses represent a common clinical picture. The annual prevalence of chronic sinusitis in Europe is up to 10%. Sinusitis can be divided into acute and chronic forms. In particular, the chronic forms (>12 weeks duration) are often challenging in the context of therapy. Generally, all ventilation disorders of the paranasal sinuses (concha bullosa, nasal septal deviations, etc.,) represent risk factors for the development of any form of sinusitis. In addition, an immune deficiency or systemic diseases relevant to the immune system predispose to infections with atypical pathogens. Most sinusitis are caused by viruses, sometimes bacteria and, in rare cases, fungal infections. Furthermore, sinusitis can be differentiated with regard to the affected paranasal sinuses. In addition to conservative ...
Facing persistent cases of hospital-onset Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) during the pandemic, the infection prevention and control (IPC) team at Children’s Hospital New Orleans developed an inexpensive nasal decolonization regimen previously used only in their adult patients that decreased rates of MRSA by 50 percent. Their results are being presented at the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology’s (APIC’s) Annual Conference in Orlando Florida, June 26-28. Without a lot of scientific literature on nasal decolonization in the pediatric population to guide them, Infection Preventionist Jennifer Schroeder, MPH, CIC, and colleagues designed two nasal decolonization protocols to fit their patient population—one for children younger than two, and the other for children older than two. The intervention took place in the hospital’s critical care units because most of the MRSA was occurring there. The team swabbed the nostrils of patients admitted to their cardiac intensive care unit, neonatal intensive care ...
The World Health Organization (WHO) has published its first global research agenda for scientists to address the ‘most urgent’ human health priorities to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which has been declared by the organisation as one of the top ten threats to global public health. Associated with the deaths of 4.95 million people in 2019, AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change and adapt to antibiotics over time. As a result, infections become harder to treat, and the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death increases. The WHO Global Research Agenda for AMR in human health outlines 40 research topics on drug-resistant bacteria, fungi and Mycobacterium tuberculosis that the organisation said “must be answered by 2030”. WHO said the aim of the agenda is to guide key stakeholders, including policymakers, researchers and funders, in generating new evidence to inform AMR policies and interventions as part of efforts ...
A team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine is gaining ground in their search for solutions to the global problem of bacterial antibiotic resistance, which was responsible for nearly 1.3 million deaths in 2019. The team reports in the journal Science Advances a drug that, in laboratory cultures and animal models, significantly reduces the ability of bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance, which might prolong antibiotic effectiveness. The drug, called dequalinium chloride (DEQ), is a proof-of-concept for evolution-slowing drugs. “Most people with bacterial infections get better after completing antibiotic treatment, but there are also many cases in which people decline because the bacteria develop resistance to the antibiotic, which then can no longer kill the bacteria,” said corresponding author Dr. Susan M. Rosenberg, Ben F. Love Chair in Cancer Research and professor of molecular and human genetics, biochemistry and molecular biology and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor. She also ...
Pfizer has announced positive phase 3 results supporting the safety and efficacy of its investigational antibiotic combination, aztreonam-avibactam (ATM-AVI), in treating serious infections caused by multi-drug resistant, gram-negative bacteria. Declared by the World Health Organization as one of the top ten threats to global health, antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change and adapt to antibiotics over time. As a result, infections become harder to treat and the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death increases. Pfizer’s late-stage programme included a study which compared ATM-AVI and metronidazole with two older antibiotics – meropenem and colistin – for the treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections, hospital-acquired pneumonia and ventilator-associated pneumonia. For patients with complicated intra-abdominal infections, the cure rate was 76.4% in the ATM-AVI plus metronidazole treatment group, versus 74% in the meropenem and colistin cohort. Additionally, for patients with hospital-acquired pneumonia and ventilator‐associated pneumonia, the cure rate ...
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