FleshEating

After confounding scientists for more than 80 years and following an unexpected recent outbreak in Australia, researchers have finally discovered how Buruli ulcer, caused by a flesh-eating bacteria, is transmitted: mosquitoes. The discovery means practical measures can now be taken to restrict the spread of the disease.Caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium ulcerans, Buruli ulcer is a chronic infection that eats away skin and subcutaneous tissue. The bacteria’s toxin attacks fat cells under the skin, leading to localized…

Barry Keoghan is opening up about a past health scare that almost cost him his life. During a new interview with GQ, the Saltburn actor revealed that he developed necrotizing fasciitis — a flesh-eating bacterial infection — in 2022, just days before he filmed The Banshees of Inisherin. During the interview, the GQ writer noticed a “gnarly scar tissue that winds its way up his arm like snake tattoo” and asked the actor about it. After explaining that he had contracted necrotizing fasciitis, Keoghan said that…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeBarry Keoghan has opened up about the flesh-eating bacteria that threatened his life in 2021.The 31-year-old Saltburn star contracted a case of necrotizing fasciitis shortly before production began on 2022’s The Banshees of Inisherin.Speaking to GQ, Keoghan recalled lying in a hospital bed with his heart monitor beeping and The Banshees of Inisherin writer-director Martin McDonagh…

A team of microbiologists in Australia have found that a bacteria being carried by certain mosquitos, can make flesh in living organisms rot away. Called the M. ulcerans, it causes Buruli ulcer, a chronic disease that affects the skin, and sometimes bones as well…

'Flesh-eating' bacteria have been found thriving on seaweed blooms and plastic pollution in the open Caribbean Ocean, and researchers worry the potential pathogens could come back to bite us.Vibrio bacteria are known to feast on marine plant and animal tissues on the coastline. When humans consume seafood or seawater infected with these pathogens, they can cause life-threatening illnesses like cholera. The species Vibrio vulnificus can even infect wounds, risking life-threatening destruction of surrounding tissue.Finding…

Earth's atmosphere and oceans are heating up beyond any previous point in human history, triggering a cascade of changes around the planet that our species is racing to manage.This is due to anthropogenic climate change, of course. Our greenhouse gas emissions are returning to haunt us in various ways, including supercharged hurricanes, heat waves, and other big weather events that affect large numbers of people all at once.But not all consequences of climate change are so immediately noticeable. According to a new study…

If you were already stressed about increased air pollution and more frequent heat waves, well, you can add another disturbing health impact of climate change to your list: the flesh-eating bacteria Vibrio vulnificus, which is thriving in warming U.S. waters. In a study published this week in Scientific Reports, researchers found that infections by bacteria Vibrio vulnificus could double in the United States within the next 20 years. The spread of this life-threatening germis being fueled by hotter temperatures that are…

Climate change is leading to an increase in potentially fatal bacterial infections is the U.S. East Coast. The Vibrio vulnificus bacteria thrive in warm coastal waters and can infect cuts or insect bites. A new study reveals that infections have risen from 10 to 80 per year over three decades, with cases now spreading as far north as Philadelphia. The bacteria, often referred to as “flesh-eating,” can cause severe damage, sometimes resulting in limb amputations for survivors.Continued warming of the climate would see a…

Jane Austen adaptations have become a staple of the cinematic diet, and you’re never too far away from another of the legendary author’s works being brought to the big screen, although we doubt we’ll see anything like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies again for a number of reasons. Hoping to make lightning strike twice in the wake of the commercially successful but critically panned Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, writer and director Burr Steers adapted author Seth Grahame-Smith’s other revisionist fantasy novel in the…

Putting a fresh spin on one well-worn genre is difficult enough as it is, so The Girl with All the Gifts should be commended for managing to tell a unique story utilizing elements of no less than four. It sounds unwieldy to call director Colm McCarthy’s movie a post-apocalyptic dystopian sci-fi zombie horror, but that’s exactly what it is, and it’s a minor miracle that the storytelling remains so incisive and focused throughout, especially when it only runs for 111 minutes including credits. In the not-too-distant…