Battling Bacteria or Boosting Superbugs

Once again we learn that another bacteria is on the rise and its leading to resistant infection.

I've asked the Infectious Disease Society to apprise me of status regarding using novel method to halt this before it becomes another base for death reports a la Morbidity & Mortality reports.

Be observant for fluroquinolone Rx, these fluoride based antibiotics have some severe side effects.

Bad Bugs Don't Need Drugs - They need courageous pratitioners who are willing to try my protocol and who dare to think outside the box.

I'll keep you posted.

Public release date: 30-Jul-2010
http://www.idsociety.org/Content.aspx?id=16864

Contact: John Heys
jheys@idsociety.org
703-299-0412
Infectious Diseases Society of America

Emerging E. coli strain causes many antimicrobial-resistant infections in US

The new strain, ST131, was a major cause of serious antimicrobial-resistant E. coli infections in the United States in 2007, researchers found. This strain has been reported in multiple countries and encountered all over the United States. In the study, researchers analyzed resistant E. coli isolates collected during 2007 from hospitalized patients across the country. They identified 54 ST131 isolates, which accounted for 67 percent to 69 percent of E. coli isolates exhibiting fluoroquinolone or extended-spectrum cephalosporin resistance.
"If we could discover the sources of this strain, the transmission pathways that allow it to spread so effectively, and the factors that have led to its rapid emergence, we could find ways to intervene and possibly slow or halt this strain's emergence," said study author James Johnson, MD, of the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.
In the past, highly virulent E. coli strains usually have been susceptible to antibiotics, while highly resistant strains have been fairly weak in terms of their ability to cause disease. The susceptible strains were easily treated even though they caused serious infections, while the resistant ones tended mostly to affect only weakened or vulnerable individuals. Now, the study's findings suggest, the ST131 strain has appeared with a high level of virulence and antimicrobial resistance.
"If this strain gains one additional resistance gene," Dr. Johnson added, "it will become almost untreatable and will be a true superbug, which is a very concerning scenario."

###

Founded in 1979, Clinical Infectious Diseases publishes clinical articles twice monthly in a variety of areas of infectious disease, and is one of the most highly regarded journals in this specialty. It is published under the auspices of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). Based in Arlington, Va., IDSA is a professional society representing more than 9,000 physicians and scientists who specialize in infectious diseases. For more information, visit www.idsociety.org.

Read more »

Posted in: antiobiotic resistance,E.coli,infection

Merck vaccine trail increased infection risk

This article points out vaccine failure. I reported on this blog at the time this report was first made. Now there is room for an update.

This experimental HIV vaccine was a Merck product, not unlike the Gardasil vaccine that is known to have caused death and higher risk of disease, without real promise of effectiveness, and no long term studies.

With advertising and marketing Merck and the FDA have made a killing of sorts, at the bank. This might be a good analogy for those of us that keep trying to explain that vaccines aren't all they are built up to be. They do make people sick.

And here's my opportunity to make another plug for the trial I'd like to run with supplements to show they can stop the conversion of HIV to AIDS.

If Bill Gates won't give me a grant perhaps Merck will. Just wish Sir Elton would read this, I'd like his money better. William and Harry might come through so we can dedicate this to their Mum.

Experimental HIV vaccine may have increased infection risk
Mon Nov 3, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Trials of a once-promising experimental HIV vaccine were cut short in 2007 because the drug may have increased the likelihood of HIV infection rather than preventing it, according to a new study.

The HIV-1 vaccine, which raised hopes in the fight against AIDS as it was being developed by US pharmaceutical giant Merck and Co., was undergoing second stage trials when the problem was discovered in September 2007, said researchers at the Montpellier Institute of Molecular Genetics in France.

The vaccine relied on a modified form of a common cold virus -- Adenovirus 5 (Ad5) -- to carry elements of HIV (Human immunodeficiency virus) into the body.

The smaller HIV parts, the Merck trials contended, would trigger the human immune system to start fighting off later infection with the virus.

One of main worries about the approach was that widespread immunity to the vaccine might cause the drug to be rejected by the body before an effective anti-HIV response could develop.

But three years after the first trial, researchers discovered that more of the vaccine recipients who had prior immunity to the Ad5 virus had been infected with HIV than those not exposed to the vaccine, according to the study, published online in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

The presence of long-lasting antibodies specifically catering to the Ad5 virus, generated during natural infections with the common cold, could have altered the response to the HIV vaccine, the study said.

HIV infection spread through cell cultures three times faster in the presence of antibodies from individuals immune to the Ad5 virus, because the HIV virus came in contact with more of its preferred "T" cells -- prompted to grow by the vaccine -- to infect.

The study said the vaccine reached the second phase of its trials because primates, used in the first phase, do not naturally come into contact with the human common cold, so the problem went unrecognized.

The vaccine prototype was tested on 700 HIV-negative persons in five hospitals in South Africa between February and September 2007, in the first clinical HIV trial of its magnitude ever conducted in Africa.

Meanwhile, tests had been conducted since 2004 in the United States, Australia, Peru, Brazil and Puerto Rico.

HIV can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

According to the World Health Organization, 33 million people around the world are infected with the AIDS virus, mostly in the sub-Sahara Africa.

Some two million people died worldwide of AIDS in 2007.

Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse.

Read more »

Posted in: AIDS,Bill Gates,Elton John,health news,HIV,infection,Merck,natural news,Prince Harry,Prince Wiliam,Princess Diana,virus,vitamins

Flu deaths? Now really

The argument proferred here makes little sense.

Flu is caused by a virus. Pneumonia is more likely than not bacterial in origin. Staph aureus is a bacteria.

The "hard-to-treat complications" are not eneumerated so we cannot determine what might connect these to flu virus. I also don't quite follow the connection from flu to staph infection. Perhaps this is from wrongly administered antibiotics that do not treat a virus.

There are many serious problems with flu vaccines and this is a poor argument to convince you to take this jab.

You should be asking many more questions rather than follow blindly.

More vitamin C, vitamin A and home made chicken soup with garlic, onions, and carrots just might give you more of a healthy boost than a drug. Years ago it was proven that chicken soup did fight colds and flu because of the amino acid cysteine found in goodly amounts in the soup.

The idea of chicken soup must be a good one because its being given to some young pandas in china to help them boost their immune systems.

Jump seen in staph-linked flu deaths in kids
By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer, Mon Oct 6, 2008

More children have died from flu because they also had staph infections, according to a new government report that urges parents to have their kids get the flu shot.

The number of deaths wasn't high — 73 during the 2006-07 flu season — but there was more than a fivefold increase in hard-to-treat complications. And preliminary figures indicate deaths rose again during this past winter's flu season.

Public health officials say the numbers underscore the importance of a brand new recommendation that all children, from 6 months through 18 years, get routine flu shots. Before this year, shots were recommended for kids under 5 years.

More than half the children who died were between ages 5 and 17 and had been healthy until they got the flu.

Parents shouldn't panic, "but it's an important message to say even healthy children develop complications and die almost before anything much can be done for them," said Dr. Gregory Poland, a Mayo Clinic infectious disease specialist. He was not involved in the federal study, but has worked with a federal vaccine advisory committee and has consulted for vaccine makers.

Flu season is just beginning, and this year's vaccine should be widely available this month.

While few children die from the flu virus, it puts about 20,000 U.S. kids in the hospital each year.

Only 6 percent of the children studied who died had been fully vaccinated against the flu. Two doses are recommended each flu season for children ages 6 months to 8 years who have not been vaccinated previously; for older kids, just one dose a year is needed.

The study, appearing in the October edition of Pediatrics for release Monday, is based on an analysis of reported flu deaths from the 2004-05 through 2006-07 seasons. Flu deaths in children during those seasons totaled 47, 46 and 73, respectively.

The percentage of those who also had bacterial infections jumped from 6 percent to almost 36 percent. Most had staph infections, and 60 percent of those involved the dangerous MRSA bug, which is resistant to antibiotics.

More recent data suggest flu deaths among children have continued to rise, with 86 tallied for the 2007-08 season in a preliminary report last month, said Lyn Finelli, the study's lead author, who is a researcher for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Preliminary information also suggests there has been no drop in fatal flu-staph cases in children, and those could still be on the rise too, she said.

Staph germs commonly live in the nose or skin without causing illness; more than one-fourth of U.S. children and adults carry them.

These bugs can become deadly when they get into the bloodstream, sometimes through wounds. The flu is thought to make people more susceptible to bacterial infections like staph, Finelli said.

Details on how children in the study died were not available, but some developed bacterial pneumonia, seizures and shock.

Finelli said parents should take children to the doctor when they have flu symptoms and signs of other complications. These could include extreme fatigue, no thirst, or in older children complaints about feeling very ill.
___

On the Net: American Academy of Pediatrics: http://www.aap.org
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press.

Read more »

Posted in: bacteria,chicken soup,flu,infection,natural,natural health news,natural news,nutrition,vaccines,vitamin A,vitamin C