Apr 21

Resistance to synthetic antibiotics in an uncontacted Amerindians population

As the climate change, everybody on earth is affected by the antibiotic resistance. The proof have been made by a multidisciplinary team from US and Venezuela with this paper published in Science advance.

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In 2008, an unmapped village of Amazonas state in Venezuela counting 34 subjects was sighted by an army helicopter, and a medical mission landed there in 2009. Volar forearm skin, oral mucosa, and fecal samples were collected before the health team vaccinated children and administered antibiotics.

These Yanomami harbor a microbiome with the highest diversity of bacteria and genetic functions ever reported in a human group. The unfortunate thing is that they harbor bacteria that carry functional antibiotic resistance (AR) genes, including those that confer resistance to synthetic antibiotics and are syntenic with mobilization elements.

This suggest that westernization significantly affects human microbiome diversity and that functional AR genes appear to be a feature of the human microbiome even in the absence of exposure to commercial antibiotics.

The restoration of the microbiome could reverse the current trend in metabolic and inflammatory diseases.

 

Mar 11

A ticking time bomb: the infectious threat of antibiotic resistance by Prof Dame Sally Davies

Mar 10

ARIBO project: presentation at the University of Leicester 9 March 2015

Mar 05

ARIBO project: Attitudes, Risk of Infection and Behaviours in the Operating room

 

Feb 12

Ebola: progress or statu quo

An editorial published in the JAMA the 11 of February, summarize all data currently available on the epidemic situation of the Ebola virus in West Africa and on treatment available or in clinical trial.

Current epidemiology:

In late January, the WHO announced that the Ebola epidemic had slowed. Inger Damon MD, PhD at the CDC said “Things are currently trending in a good direction, suggesting growing control”. But, vigilance is necessary
to prevent resurgence and Brice de la Vingne from MSF said justly that a single new case is enough to reignite
an outbreak.

Ebola

Treatment progresses:

Currently, Currently, the most effective treatment for Ebola virus disease is fluid and electrolyte replacement and
other supportive care.

ZMAPP: 3 different neutralizing antibodies against the Ebola virus, based on promising results from animal studies. It has now are being fast tracked into phase 1 and 2 clinical trials in US and Liberia. Pharmaceutical companies are involved in the project to help scale up antibody production.

TKB-Ebola: blocks the enzyme that catalyzes the replication of the Ebola virus, is currently in phase 1

Favipiravir et brincidofovir: have been launched at the end of 2014 by MSF

Blood and plasma from patients who survived an Ebola virus infection: Multiple clinical trials are currently underway in the affected countries. A recent analysis projected that transfusion therapy could save 151 to 3586 lives but with a risk of transmission of other diseases.

Vaccines:

Vaccin developed by NIAID and GlaxoSmithKline: uses chimpanzee adenovirus type 3 (ChAd3) as a vector
to deliver noninfectious Ebolagenes into the body to stimulate an immune response. Preliminary results from a phase 1 trial of the ChAd3 vaccine in 60 health volunteers in United Kingdom reported no safety concerns and found that the vaccine stimulated an immune response not as robust as expected. But the authors suggest this
might be remedied by adjusting the vaccine dose.

The US Department of Defense, NewLink and Merck: phase 1 trials of another vaccine that uses vesicular  stomatitis virus (VSV) as a vector. A phase 2-3 randomized double-blind trial that will compare both the VSV and ChAd3 Ebola virus vaccines and a placebo in 27 000 health workers and others at risk in Liberia

The CDC is also preparing for a 6000-person vaccine trial in Sierra Leone.

Current difficulties:

Public health organisation of the 3 counties are totally destabilized, populations leaving in the forest are difficult to make them aware, and difference in term of religions and cultures…

Another major factor is the genetic changes in the Ebola virus which can influence clinical trial results.

 

Feb 11

Articles in English as well !!!

Frananglais

This website is progressing. You will now have the possibility to read articles both in French and English languages. I will also try to present reviews of articles in English to allow a maximum of people to follow it.

Hope that these changes will satisfy our friends interested in the field of healthcare associated infections and watching this blog from distant countries !!!

Best wishes

 

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