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03 September 2008 Dr. Kristen Kerksiek
A life in slime – biofilms rule the world
In 1905, Robert Koch (1843-1910) was awarded the Nobel prize for his identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as the causative agent of tuberculosis. More than a century later, the methods Koch used to grow bacteria in culture, which have enabled the identification of countless microorganisms as well as insight into the way they "work", are little changed and still form the foundation of medical microbiology. It therefore seems ironic that the pure cultures that have proven so valuable in the laboratory are virtually absent in nature: >99.9% of bacteria exist in heterogeneous communities called biofilms.
11 August 2008 Dr. Kristen Kerksiek
Infectious hospitals - The dangerous side of healthcare
In the United States alone, approximately 2 million infections occur during treatment in a healthcare facility – infections that patients didn’t bring with them and that are not related to the cause of hospitalization. The annual cost for treatment of these infections is estimated in the billions, and some 100,000 patients never go home.
17 June 2008 R. John Davenport
The Next Pandemic: Bird flu and the 1918 scourge yield harbingers of threats to come
In 1918, a flu virus swept across the world, killing 50 million or more people. Recently, a bird flu virus swept through domestic bird populations, and occasionally hopped from birds to people. The virus bears resemblance to the 1918 virus, so the bird flu outbreak raised fears of an imminent pandemic. Research over the last few years has provided some clues as to what the next pandemic flu virus might look like and how to prepare.
31 March 2008 R. John Davenport
Front Lines: Africa faces unique challenges in the fight against infectious diseases
Despite profound medical advances over the last century, infectious diseases still present a serious threat to world health. And though many regions are hard-hit, perhaps no part of the world faces as extreme challenges as Africa does. Ongoing fights against HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, coupled with changing demographics, modernizing cities, and bloody conflicts, present a difficult road ahead for African nations to keep people healthy.
01 February 2008 R. John Davenport
Coming to a Boil: Climate change encourages the expansion of infectious disease
Will there be a triumphant progress of infection diseases while heating up our climate?
“Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly, should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year, and what effects each of them produces for they are not at all alike, but differ much from themselves in regard to their changes.” So wrote the Greek physician Hippocrates in 400 BC, imploring physicians to heed the effects of weather and climate on disease. Now, as global climate change threatens to alter life as we know it, the effect of climate on health, including infectious diseases, returns to the fore.
10 December 2007 R. John Davenport
Vaccine Development: Promise and Peril
High hopes and deap disappointments go along with vaccine development
Vaccines have suppressed many scourges over the last two centuries and new vaccines could aid the fight against numerous current health threats. Yet, counterbalancing successful vaccine development are expectations and disappointments.
09 October 2007 R. John Davenport
A shifting threat
Development of antibiotic resistance and spread outside of hospitals weighs on researchers’ efforts to tame Staphylococcus
Otherwise-healthy children die of unusual infections. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria spread through sports teams. And the last line drug loses effectiveness. The threat of Staphylococcus to human health continues, and presents new challenges for doctors and scientists. Researchers are delving into developing new antibiotics, understanding why staph infections aren’t restricted to hospitals anymore, and figuring out how the bug evades the host immune system.
01 September 2007 R. John Davenport
A new century of new challenges
Infection Research faces new threats
Infection research is experiencing something of a rebirth. The century-long decline in rates of infectious diseases has flattened out and in some cases risen over the last two decades. Many diseases that were once well-controlled have remounted their attack, and a host of new sicknesses have come to the fore. In addition, the body of scientific data has provided a crystal ball through which scientists conjure future diseases - though researchers don't when or if these new scourges will appear and how devastating they will be.
