sentinel
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Post by sentinel on Apr 4, 2014 7:06:07 GMT 10
Sky News article.
Superbug 'may become untreatable'
Updated: 19:27, Tuesday April 1, 2014
A rapidly spreading superbug that causes bladder and blood infections could evolve and become untreatable.
Queensland researchers found a strain of E. coli was one gene away from becoming resistant to almost all drugs.
The bacteria had evolved and spread rapidly worldwide over the past five years.
Study co-author Dr Nouri Ben Zakour says the spread of the multi-drug resistant ST131 strain could lead to a spike in urinary tract and blood infections.
'More than 150 million cases of urinary tract infection are reported globally every year,' Dr Zakour, from the Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre, said.
'So an E. coli resistant to all currently effective antibiotic treatments could be devastating to the community.'
The University of Queensland research will be used to develop detection tests.
The study was published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
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sentinel
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Post by sentinel on May 2, 2014 16:51:21 GMT 10
Here is the access link to this article if you want to follow it further - there was some other good information on other stories there as well. Via: International Business Times:
(One on how google was allowed to intercept and read your emails - as you have allowed them by using their product).
Heading article was under is below.
Sars Research Lab Loses 2,000 Tubes of Killer Virus Fragments
I Was thinking - if this is not an 'active' version of S.A.R.S. - why is it stored in such a secure lab?
Why is it causing such a ruckus now to locate the "missing samples"?
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Source - Reuters;
Sars Research Lab Loses 2,000 Tubes of Killer Virus
•By Umberto Bacchi
April 15, 2014 13:55 GMT
A prestigious research institute in France said it had lost thousands of tubes of samples of the deadly Sars coronavirus.
A routine inventory check at Paris' Pasteur Institute revealed that 2,349 tubes containing fragments of the virus responsible for the deaths of 774 people in 2002 were missing, the centre named after French chemist Louis Pasteur said.
The institute was quick to reassure the public and said that the contents of the missing vials had no infectious potential. They contained only part of the virus and had no ability to spread.
"Independent experts referred by health authorities have qualified such potential as 'non-existing' according to the available evidence and literature on the survival of the Sars virus," the institute said.
In 2002 more than 8,000 people were infected by a pandemic of Sars - severe acute respiratory syndrome. The virus spread from China through Hong Kong and on to other countries before it was eventually brought under control.
It is not clear how the tubes disappeared from one of the institute's safest laboratories. Management were made aware of the loss in January, Le Monde newspaper reported.
For weeks, staff at the institute tried to find the missing vials, general director Christian Bréchot said.
"We've looked for those boxes [containing the tubes] everywhere," Bréchot explained.
"We went thought the lists of all the people who have worked here in the past year and a half, including trainees. We have scrutinised their profile to check if there was any conflict."
Bréchot said that foul play was "highly improbable" but had not been ruled out.
The tubes were stored in a high-security laboratory dedicated to research into highly infective viruses.
Access to the lab is limited to a restricted number of personnel, who have to go through a disinfection process before they can leave.
Bréchot suggested that the tubes, which were moved from one freezer to another in March 2013, might have been destroyed by a member of staff who forgot to record the procedure.
Sars is an airborne virus, which spreads in a similar way to flu and the common cold.
The Agency for the Safety of Health Products has opened an investigation into the missing tubes.
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Post by pheniox17 on May 2, 2014 18:43:12 GMT 10
if that's the info they gave, I'm worried as SARS is nasty, but there are worse bugs they have in storage....
wait till "localized outbreaks of SARS" pop up...
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myrrph
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trying to figure out how to change my nick :P
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Post by myrrph on May 2, 2014 19:31:55 GMT 10
MERS comes to mind. That is the one which is running around now
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sentinel
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Post by sentinel on May 2, 2014 22:28:06 GMT 10
I think this may be a greater threat than MERS - this has been on the increase in the KSA and surrounding countries for some time - they don't seem to have a tight control at all on this one. I would be also wondering how many cases go unreported out in the poorer areas. They don't seem to know the 'What', 'Where' or 'How' this is spreading.
Published Date: 2014-05-02 06:49:06
Subject: PRO/AH/EDR> MERS-CoV - Eastern Mediterranean (47): Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, WHO
Archive Number: 20140502.2442560
MERS-COV - EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN (47): SAUDI ARABIA, JORDAN, EGYPT, WHO
The newly laboratory confirmed infections with MERS-CoV above raise the total number of laboratory confirmed MERS-CoV infections reported by Saudi Arabia to 371, including 107 deaths. The individuals with confirmed asymptomatic infections have been tested as part of contact tracing and represent probable person-to-person transmission. It would be useful to know what proportion/percent of the reported asymptomatic infections progress to symptomatic respiratory (or non-respiratory) infections during what would be considered the accepted incubation period for the disease, and what proportion of these individuals remain asymptomatic throughout the entire period until they no longer have evidence of active viral infection. Some of the information gaps in understanding MERS-CoV infections include the natural history of infections, including true proportion of symptomatic to asymptomatic infections and what is the period of high transmissibility of the virus (are there asymptomatic virus transmitters? Or does transmission primarily occur after symptoms occur?).
This moderator erroneously stated that it appeared as though all newly confirmed infections reported on 30 Apr 2014 (MERS-CoV - Eastern Mediterranean (45): Saudi Arabia 20140430.2437089) were person-to-person transmission. The actual thought process was that over the past several days, there has been no mention of history of travel or history of contact with animals (and especially camels or camel products), suggesting that perhaps most of the newly confirmed infections were felt to be due to either direct person-to-person transmission or indirect person-to-person transmission both in the healthcare environment and or community. The same thought process applies to those newly reported infections above. We await more detailed information on studies of apparent chains of transmission of the MERS-CoV confirmed since the middle of March 2014
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