Looming Threat Of Antibiotic Resistance Prompts Unprecedented Meeting At UN
Scientists are hopeful that any resolution coming from the high-level meeting will provide advocates with ammunition: “It gives people and organizations a hammer to hit them on the head to say, ‘You agreed to this and you are not doing it,’” says Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Washington-based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy.
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At The UN, Superbugs Get Their Day On Their World Stage
Heads of state from around the globe will gather this week to try to address a long-neglected issue that poses perhaps the biggest health threat the world faces: the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance is not traditionally the domain of world leaders, and health-related issues — outside of crises such as the Ebola outbreak — are rarely discussed at venues like the United Nations General Assembly. (Branswell, 9/19)
In other news —
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Drug To Combat Brain-Eating Amoeba Exists — But How To Get It To Patients?
Hospitals are stocked with lots of vital drugs. But there’s one that is time-sensitive, life-saving, and an utter necessity in treating a rare kind of infection — but you’ll find it almost nowhere in the US. The drug is called miltefosine. It is a microbe-killing drug that can sometimes save the lives of people infected with a brain-eating amoeba, if given immediately upon diagnosis. The problem is that, until recently, the only place the drug came from was CDC headquarters; when an infection was reported, the drug would have to be flown or driven from Atlanta, adding hours of delay. (Wessel, 9/16)
WBUR:
'The Mind-Gut Connection': Could Your Gut Microbes Be Affecting How You Feel?
My trillions of gut microbes, it seems, are in constant communication with my brain, and there’s mounting evidence that they may affect how I feel — not just physically but emotionally. Does this mean — gulp — that maybe our bugs are driving the bus? I spoke with the book’s author, Dr. Emeran Mayer, professor of medicine and psychiatry at UCLA, executive director of the Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience and expert in brain-gut microbiome interactions. (Goldberg, 9/16)