medicalcondition:lancet infectious diseases

A ‘superbug’ emerges in China to remind us that antibiotics won’t last forever - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/11/19/a-superbug-emerges-in-china-to-remind-us-that-antibiotics-wont-last-

In general, I do my best not to alarm you. But antibiotic resistant bacteria are alarming — and you should be afraid.

According to a study published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, a gene dubbed MCR-1 is becoming more common in bacteria found in China. MCR-1 gives bacteria the ability to resist antibiotics called polymyxins. These harsh antibiotics are considered a last line of defense — a treatment when bacteria have shown resistance to everything else. But with MCR-1 in tow, bacteria can thwart our most aggressive drugs.

That means they’re basically invincible. And MCR-1 could theoretically end up jumping to all manner of bacteria.

“Polymyxins were the last class of antibiotics in which resistance was incapable of spreading from cell to cell,” co-author Jian-Hua Liu, a professor at Southern Agricultural University in Guangzhou, told the AFP.

So much for that.

The researchers tested slaughterhouse pigs and raw meat from markets for the gene. MCR-1 was found in 20 percent of the sampled pigs and 15 percent of the meat, and in increasing abundance from year-to-year. The gene was also found in E. coli K. pneumoniae samples taken from 16 of 1,322 patients at two Chinese hospitals.

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Emergence of plasmid-mediated colistin resistance mechanism MCR-1 in animals and human beings in China: a microbiological and molecular biological study - The Lancet Infectious Diseases
▻http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(15)00424-7/abstract

Interpretation
The emergence of MCR-1 heralds the breach of the last group of antibiotics, polymyxins, by plasmid-mediated resistance. Although currently confined to China, MCR-1 is likely to emulate other global resistance mechanisms such as NDM-1. Our findings emphasise the urgent need for coordinated global action in the fight against pan-drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria.

The Ebola endgame, and what comes after - The Lancet Infectious Diseases
▻http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(15)00032-8/fulltext

It can be argued that the weak health systems that were in place when the #Ebola outbreak started helped spread the epidemic because of their lack of capacity to detect and diagnose the disease or to manage severely ill patients. The strategic plan notes that government health expenditure was low and that “external funding was skewed towards #millennium_development goals with limited investments in core health systems functions”.

Management of endemic diseases such as malaria has suffered because of the focus on Ebola over the past year: a modelling paper by Patrick Walker and colleagues in this journal estimates an additional 10 900 #malaria-attributable deaths during the Ebola outbreak.

#santé #développement

Les frottis nasaux (entre autres…) de dromadaires qataris le confirment #MERS-CoV est bien commun aux chameaux et aux humains. Mais on ne sait pas dans quel sens ça passe, ni même s’il y a une autre origine.

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in dromedary camels : an outbreak investigation : The Lancet Infectious Diseases
▻http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(13)70690-X/fulltext

Our study provides virological confirmation of MERS-CoV in camels and suggests a recent outbreak affecting both human beings and camels. We cannot conclude whether the people on the farm were infected by the camels or vice versa, or if a third source was responsible.