drugresistant

Researchers have identified an entirely new class of antibiotic that can kill bacteria that are resistant to most current drugs.Zosurabalpin is highly effective against the bacterium carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (Crab), which is classified as a "priority 1" pathogen by the World Health Organization due to its growing presence in hospitals.Crab can kill up to 60% of people infected with it. It commonly causes infections of the urinary tract, respiratory tract and blood stream, potentially leading to…

Under a microscope, this drug-resistant superbug looks as benign as a handful of pebbles. Yet carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, or CRAB, is a nightmare for hospitals worldwide, as it kills roughly half of all patients who acquire it.Identified as a top-priority pathogen by both the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CRAB is the most common form of a group of bacteria that are resistant to nearly all available antibiotics. Victims are typically hospitalized…

A cheap and widely available antibiotic pill halves the risk of people exposed to drug-resistant tuberculosis from contracting the particularly deadly strain of the disease, researchers announced on Thursday.Tuberculosis is the second deadliest infectious disease, according to the World Health Organization, killing only slightly fewer people than Covid-19 last year.Every year an estimated 450,000 people contract multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), which front-line drugs no longer work against.​Only two in five…

AI technology has helped MIT and McMaster University researchers identify a new antibiotic named abaucin, effective against Acinetobacter baumannii, a hospital-borne, drug-resistant bacteria. The drug, discovered through a machine-learning model, is significant due to its narrow-spectrum efficacy and unique mechanism of disrupting lipoprotein trafficking within bacterial cells.The machine-learning algorithm identified a compound that kills Acinetobacter baumannii, a bacterium that lurks in many hospital settings.Using an…

Two severe cases of ringworm identified at a clinic in the US city of New York have reportedly failed to respond to a common antifungal treatment, according to a case study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.It's unlikely the two cases are directly linked – with one patient developing the infection in the US in the summer of 2021 and the other in Bangladesh in the summer of 2022 – raising concerns over a potentially hidden outbreak of drug-resistant dermatitis.Ringworm is caused by any one of…

For a team of Canadian and French researchers, dark clouds on the horizon are potentially ominous not because they signal an approaching storm – but because they were found in a recent study to carry drug-resistant bacteria over long distances."These bacteria usually live on the surface of vegetation like leaves, or in soil," lead author Florent Rossi said in a telephone interview Friday."We found that they are carried by the wind into the atmosphere and can travel long distances – around the world – at high altitudes in…

Reykjavik-based Akthelia Pharmaceuticals and the University of Iceland have been awarded a €6m grant by Horizon Europe to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites evolve and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat. AMR is listed among the WHO’s most pressing health threats of our time, with the potential to give rise to the next global pandemic as “pan-drug”-resistant strains emerge. It’s also estimated that AMR…

Professor John E. Moses has developed a shape-shifting antibiotic using click chemistry, combining vancomycin with bullvalene—a molecule with over a million configurations—to create a more effective drug that bacteria did not develop resistance to, potentially revolutionizing the fight against drug-resistant infections.Antibiotic resistance is a major public health threat, ranked as one of the top 10 by the World Health Organization. Every year, in the United States alone, nearly 3 million people are infected by…

There’s no question that the discovery of antibiotics just under 100 years ago has had a profound impact on the world. However, the rise of drug-resistant bacteria is now painting more of a grim picture, with some studies predicting that it could claim as many as 10 million lives by 2050.New research out of New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) suggests that the key may be to beat bacteria at its own game, adapting and changing in real time to topple the pathogens’ defenses.Using innovative click chemistry, the…

Scientists have found an antibiotic-free way of treating 'golden staph' skin infections that are the scourge of some cancer patients, and a threat to hospital-goers everywhere.The lab study from researchers at the University of Copenhagen utilized an artificial version of an enzyme that's naturally produced by bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria), and used it to eradicate Staphylococcus aureus, or golden staph, in biopsy samples from people with skin lymphoma."To people who are severely ill with skin lymphoma,…