World on cusp of post-antibiotic era | Page 3 | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

it appears to be in Europe

Superbug resistant to ALL antibiotics reaches Europe: Danish patient becomes infected with untreatable form of salmonella that is 'probably already in Britain'

• The patient's current state of health cannot be disclosed, scientists say
• But they fear this is the start of a global epidemic of untreatable infections
• Announcement comes just weeks after Chinese academics discovered superbugs had breached last line of antibiotic defences for the first time

Read more: http://www.dailymail.....z3tv3ZEi2J

didn't even think of std's

Gonorrhoea is at risk of becoming an untreatable disease, England’s chief medical officer has said.

Dame Sally Davies has written to all GPs and pharmacies to ensure they are prescribing the correct drugs after the rise of a highly drug-resistant strain of the infection.

The warning comes after a national public health alert was triggered in Septemberby an outbreak of highly drug-resistant gonorrhoea in the north of England.

“Gonorrhoea is at risk of becoming an untreatable disease due to the continuing emergence of antimicrobial resistance,” Davies writes.

“Gonorrhoea has rapidly acquired resistance to new antibiotics, leaving few alternatives to the current recommendations. It is therefore extremely important that suboptimal treatment does not occur.” The letter is also signed by the chief pharmaceutical officer, Dr Keith Ridge.

more http://www.theguardi.....lly-davies

interesting, using viruses to combat bacteria

When doctors told Christophe Novou that his leg would have to be amputated at the hip due to a raging bacterial infection, the 47-year-old Frenchman thought about killing himself.

After surviving a crippling traffic accident and dozens of operations to repair the damage, to him life in a wheelchair just did not seem worth living.

That's when an article about a clinic in Georgia offering an obscure treatment for hard-to-treat infections using live virus -- something called phage therapy -- caught his eye. 

Within hours, he was on a plane to Tblisi.

"Without it, I wouldn't be here," Novou told AFP on the sidelines of a conference in Paris about the mostly forgotten therapy, which remains marginal outside a few former Soviet bloc countries. 

The treatment harnesses viruses called phages to attack and kill dangerous bacteria, including "superbugs" which have become progressively resistant to antibiotics.

In Novou's case, it was Staphylococcus, a common bacteria which can cause anything from a simple boil to horrible flesh-eating infections.

Mostly ignored up to now by mainstream medicine, the alternative treatment has started to gain adherents over the last 15 years, especially in France, Belgium and the United States.

more http://news.yahoo.co.....02629.html