Residual waste from mushroom cultivation removes pollutants from water
"The substrate effectively decreases concentrations of pesticides and drugs in contaminated water. ..... The results show the potential of the substrate as a promising alternative to current water purification methods."
My new story for the Medical Post/Canadian Healthcare Network. #Doctors and #pharmacists in Canada can log on for free. Here are a few paragraphs.
Could a century old treatment be an answer to antibiotic resistance?
In a first in Canada, a patient with an #antibiotic resistant artificial joint infection has received treatment with phage therapy and is showing promising early responses.
“This is cutting edge stuff, and a potentially new technology,” said Dr. Marisa Azad, the infectious diseases physician who treated the patient. She is also an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa.
The patient presented with severe periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) in the summer of 2023. She had already undergone multiple surgeries and had experienced several relapses and infections with the same persistent bacteria.
“She’d been on multiple very prolonged courses of antibiotics and had a severe drug allergy to two major drug classes of antibiotics. I was extremely limited in what I could use to treat her,” Dr. Azad told the Medical Post in an interview.
That’s when the idea arose of trying an experimental treatment course with phage therapy. The team got approval for doing the experimental treatment from Health Canada, and worked with Winnipeg-based Cytophage, which supplied the phages.
“We developed a protocol and gave her therapy over two weeks while she was admitted to hospital. She’s completed her therapy. Now we’re monitoring her closely and giving her adjunctive antibiotics,” she said.
The idea didn’t come out of the blue. In the medical literature, a study from just last year in Clinical #Infectious Diseases provided a review of 33 previously published cases of patients with end-stage, refractory bone and joint infections (BJI) who underwent treatment with phage therapy. The authors found that from those case reports, “29 (87%) achieved microbiological or clinical success, two (5.9%) relapsed with the same organisms, and two (5.9%) with a different organism” with no serious adverse events.
The conclusions of that paper stated there were “important advantages, disadvantages, and barriers to the implementation of phage therapy for BJIs.” Yet, at the same time, the authors added they, “believe that if phage therapy were to be used earlier in the clinical course, fewer cumulative antibiotics may be needed in an individual treatment course.”
The word phage is short for #bacteriophage, a word coined in 1917—literally meaning bacteria-eater. They are viruses whose lifecycle depends on certain types of bacteria.
“They latch on to specific types of bacteria and inject their genetic material into the bacterial cell." Dr. Azad explained. "They take over the bacterial cells’ machinery to produce more little viruses inside and explode or burst open the bacteria,” releasing viral particles that can go and infect other cells of the same type of bacteria.
Intriguingly, each #phage targets a specific type of #bacteria...
The story of phages started over 100 years ago. They were independently discovered, first in 1915 by a British pathologist, Frederick Twort, and then again in 1917 by French-Canadian microbiologist Felix d’Herelle. And...
Hidden 'biosphere' of extreme microbes discovered 13 feet below Atacama Desert is deepest found there to date
"Researchers have found microbes thriving 13 feet beneath the scorched surface of Chile's Atacama Desert, marking the deepest discovery of microbial life in the region to date."
Guten Morgen! Was war gestern schön was hat euch gefreut? Es sind die kleinen Dinge die zählen.
Heute ausnahmsweise Bakterien: die roten Kolonien sind vermutlich Serratia marcescens. Dieses Bakterium ist für viele mittelalterliche Blutwunder verantwortlich. Die Rote Färbung und dass Kolonien schleimige Filme auf feuchten Oberflächen bilden erklärt wie z.B. Hostien über Nacht mit "Blut" durchtränkt waren oder blutige Tränen an Statuen. #diekleinendinge#microbiology#serratia#biodiversity
Cereal leaf #beetle-associated #bacteria enhance the survival of their host upon #insecticide treatments and respond differently to insecticides with different modes of action
American pediatrician and microbiologist Hattie Alexander was born #OTD in 1901.
She is particularly renowned for her groundbreaking work on the treatment and prevention of Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) infections, which cause meningitis, pneumonia, and other serious illnesses, especially in children. In the course of her research on antibiotics, she noted and reported the appearance of antibiotic-resistant strains of Hib which was caused by random genetic mutations in DNA.
Some exciting new South African research on a new TB skin test, which could offer cheaper and easier way to detect tuberculosis, a killer in many parts of Africa and the world.
Tonight I hosted a screening and discussion of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. Everything worked technically and there was a good audience. I am very grateful for my chemistry students who came and contributed to the conversation.
Even if you don’t know Henrietta’s story, you’ve probably benefited from her cells. You can read the excellent book (by the same name) or this: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henrietta-lacks.