Antibiotics Expert

More than a quarter of the University of Pennsylvania’s undergraduates have been issued antibiotics as a precaution against a bacterial infection that has hospitalized three students, officials said yesterday.

No new cases of meningococcal disease have been confirmed since Friday, and a city public health official said two other students who had been hospitalized with flu-like symptoms probably did not have the more serious illness.

The three students with confirmed Neisseria meningitidis were in fair or good condition yesterday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, a positive sign with a disease that is fatal in 10 to 15 percent of cases and causes permanent serious disability in an additional 10 to 15 percent. Read the rest of this entry »

A new drive to remind people that antibiotics do not help with coughs, colds and sore throats has been launched by the Government.

Diseases are becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics and over-prescribing has been linked to the development of “superbugs” that fail to respond to treatment.

The Government’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, launched a new campaign to drive down antibiotic use.

Aimed at the public and doctors, the campaign will feature adverts in newspapers and magazines.

It focuses on colds, flu and sore throats – caused by viruses that rarely respond to antibiotics. Read the rest of this entry »

The percentage of gonorrhea cases in Ontario resistant to a common class of antibiotics has soared, and researchers say that finding reinforces national guidelines advising against the use of those drugs to treat the infections.

In Monday’s online issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Dr. Susan Richardson of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and her colleagues reported that antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea increased to a rate of 28 per cent in 2006 from two per cent in 2001.

The magnitude of the rate of resistance to quinolone antibiotics was “unusually high” for North America, the researchers said.

“Really there needs to be a Canada-wide surveillance project that is probably ongoing into the future to keep tabs on what’s happening to resistance for this important pubic health pathogen,” said Richardson. Read the rest of this entry »