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The Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC's) health ministry said today that all contacts of the last confirmed case have completed their 21-day monitoring periods with none showing any signs of illness, marking the beginning of the countdown to the end of the nation's ninth Ebola outbreak.
A financial incentive program for United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) local groups reduced antibiotic prescribing by general practitioners for common respiratory infections by 3%, a research team based at Imperial College London reported today in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.
Men had higher expression of antimicrobial resistance genes, a finding that may have implications for the growing threat of resistant gonorrhea.
Intensive surveillance activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola virus outbreak have turned up three more suspected cases in the remote town of Bikoro, according to an update today from the country's health ministry.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted fast-track approval for a new oral antiviral with a different mechanism of action than neuraminidase inhibitors that offers one-dose treatment, according to a Jun 25 statement from Genentech, part of the Roche Group. The drug, called baloxavir marboxil, was approved in Japan in February for the treatment of influenza A and B in adult and pediatric patients.
Only 16 antibiotic candidates against high-priority pathogens are in progress.
In a separate report, researchers from Liberia weigh in on urban spread in the DRC and recommend strategies for reducing that type of Ebola transmission.
In a World Health Organization (WHO) African regional office weekly bulletin, Kenya reported an additional 44 cases of Rift Valley fever (RVF), including 6 deaths, in an ongoing outbreak of the virus.
The spike in cases raises outbreak totals to 54 cases, including 11 deaths, resulting in a case-fatality rate of 20.4%. Men ages 21 to 30 years old make up 70% of the patients.
Healthcare-related CDI fell from 5.9 to 4.3 per 10,000 patient-days, a 27% reduction.
No new lab-confirmed Ebola infections were reported from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) over the past 3 days, though surveillance workers continue to report more suspected cases from the remote hot spots, while tests rule out earlier suspected cases.
The Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government, in partnership with Australia's Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and the Department of Health, released a new report showing that targeting high-prescribing physicians with a letter from the CMO helped lower the number of antibiotic prescriptions within 6 months.
Two strains of herpesvirus were twice as high in people with Alzheimer's disease.
The UCSD effort will involve clinical trials of phages against resistant bacteria.
Our weekly wrap-up of antimicrobial stewardship & antimicrobial resistance scans
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) yesterday noted four new suspected cases of Ebola virus, two each in Bikoro and Iboko health zones, yet the number of cases overall remained steady. Four previously suspected cases tested negative for the virus, so the current total now stands at 61 cases, including 38 confirmed, 14 probable, and 9 suspected.
Today Democratic US Senators Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) introduced the Strengthening Antibiotic Oversight Act to strengthen regulation of medically important antibiotics administered to food-producing animals.
Public info campaigns may at times increase demand for antibiotics, study finds.
In the latest development in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Ebola outbreak, the country's health ministry yesterday reported three new suspected cases in Bikoro, one of the two remote hotspots, according to a daily update.
Re-creating known pathogenic viruses and making existing bacteria more dangerous are among the top threats.
Russia's agriculture ministry reported 16 more highly pathogenic H5 outbreaks, mostly in backyard poultry, according to a notification today from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
