antibiotics

Big pharma continues to walk away from investment in new antibiotics and there are alarmingly few useful new drugs in the pipeline to deal with the worsening crisis of antibiotic resistance, according to the World Health Organization. Two reports paint a bleak picture. Efforts to discover new...

Drug-resistant superbugs are as big a threat as climate change, the health secretary will say as he unveils a new five-year plan to tackle the problem. Overuse of antibiotics is making infections harder to treat and leading to thousands of deaths a year through drug-resistant superbugs. The...

Scientists say they have engineered a new antibiotic that appears promising in early clinical trials. The drug, made by Shionogi Inc, acts like the Trojan horse in Greek legend to trick bacteria into allowing it to enter. Trials on 448 people with a kidney or urinary tract infection suggested...

US scientists have discovered a new family of antibiotics in soil samples. The natural compounds could be used to combat hard-to-treat infections, the team at Rockefeller University hopes. Tests show the compounds, called malacidins, annihilate several bacterial diseases that have become...

It is time to reconsider the widespread advice that people should always complete an entire course of antibiotics, experts in the BMJ say. They argue there is not enough evidence to back the idea that stopping pills early encourages antibiotic resistance. Instead, they suggest, more studies...

US scientists have re-engineered a vital antibiotic in a bid to wipe out one of the world's most threatening superbugs. Their new version of vancomycin is designed to be ultra-tough and appears to be a thousand times more potent than the old drug, PNAS journal reports. It fights bacteria in...

Komodo dragon blood contains an important compound which scientists think could offer a new treatment for infected wounds. The reptile's saliva harbours many different types of bacteria, which somehow do not affect the dragon. Scientists at George Mason University in the US created a synthetic...

The 193 countries of the United Nations are to sign a landmark declaration to rid the world of drug-resistant infections or "superbugs". Six years in the making, the international commitment could prevent 700,000 deaths a year, say experts. It is the fourth time a UN declaration has been...

Has anyone else experienced wild BG swings whilst taking anitbiotics? Long story short - toenail removed in April, still not healed in August (!) so had it swabbed, nasty bacteria has colonised, so am now on mega doses of erythromycin. It's making me feel queasy and hungry at the same time, the...

A new class of antibiotics has been discovered by analysing the bacterial warfare taking place up people's noses, scientists report. Tests reported in the journal Nature found the resulting drug, lugdunin, could treat superbug infections. The researchers, at the University of Tubingen in...

GPs in England have "dramatically" reduced the amount of antibiotics they give to patients, latest figures show. NHS Improvement says prescriptions for all types of antibiotic were down by more than 2.6 million on the previous year to about 34 million in 2015-16. They say it is a "fantastic...

NHS England has launched a national programme to combat antibiotic overusage, which it describes it as “the world’s largest healthcare incentive scheme” to prevent antimicrobial resistance. The programme, which goes live in April 2016, will offer hospitals incentive funding worth up to £150...

More than 80 pharmaceutical companies have called on governments to develop new ways of paying them to develop antibiotics. In a joint declaration, at the World Economic Forum, they said the value of antibiotics "does not reflect the benefits they bring to society". In return, they have...

Amyloid diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and type-2 diabetes pose a particular problem for drug designers because they do not present a clear target structure to aim at. Instead of the disease being linked to a single, easily identifiable species such as the active site of an enzyme or...

Superbugs may be passed on to people by eating undercooked meat, a government report has warned. Antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria can lurk in the meat we eat because of excessive use of antibiotics for farming, according to the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. If we eat it raw or...

Farmers need to dramatically cut the amount of antibiotics used in agriculture, because of the threat to human health, a report says. Some infections are becoming almost impossible to treat, because of the excessive use of antibiotics. And more than half of those used around the world are used...

GPs who prescribe fewer antibiotics have less satisfied patients, according to a new study by researchers at King's College London. The study, published in the British Journal of General Practice, compared the prescribing rates of more than 95% of all GP surgeries in England to a survey of...

I mentioned on Monday that this past week was intended by the CDC, WHO and other health authorities to be a global awareness week for antibiotic resistance. Alarming news that came out of China at the end of the week certainly created new awareness of resistance, but possibly not what the...