Two days ago, our paper on the “Evolution dynamics of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in a healthcare system” was published in the BiomedCentral journal Genome Biology. We sequenced the genomes of 260 clinical MRSA isolates cultured over 3 decades (1982 to 2010) in four Singaporean hospitals – a number that seemed really high back in 2011, but […]
Clostridium difficile is an anaerobic Gram-positive rod that can colonise the intestines of humans and other animals. It is related to the bacterium that causes tetanus (Clostridium tetani) as well as the bacterium that causes food poisoning and occasionally gas gangrene (Clostridium perfringens). Like all Clostridia, it can form spores, which it does as a survival response […]
This rather interesting paper was brought to my notice earlier, but I could only read it today. Published in PLoS ONE this month by Australian authors using European data, Dr. Peter Collignon and his colleagues showed that the “quality of governance” (measured on a scale of 0-6 based on subjective assessment by experts on each country’s […]
The big news for antimicrobial resistance over the past week has been the decision by McDonald’s (the fast food chain) to use only antibiotic-free chicken in 2 years’ time. This will only affect the U.S. branches, although the company is also exploring phasing this in Europe. No signs of this happening in Singapore or the […]
Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) looks set to becoming Singapore’s biggest antibiotic-resistant bacterial challenge for the immediate future, even more so than other members of the multidrug-resistant bacteria “alphabet soup”, viz. MRSA, VRE, XDR-AB, XDR-PA, etc. What is one unexpected consequence of having patients with CRE in our hospitals? Well, it gets into our sewage system. I have […]
Nontuberculous mycobactera (NTM) is a collective term for all Mycobacterium spp. that are not part of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex or Mycobacterium leprae. Virtually all are environmental mycobacteria (rather than the human- and animal-adapted pathogens that cause tuberculosis and leprosy), although they are able to cause human infection in a limited number of situations, i.e. when the human is immunocompromised […]
I had some time to reflect after finishing a rather interesting meeting in Thailand organised by a pharmaceutical company. In their usual way, the company had invited representatives from different countries in the region to obtain perspectives on the issue of antimicrobial resistance – specifically carbapenem resistance and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) – in our countries. Naturally, they […]
A short summary of the current dilemma with antibiotic development. Others, including the World Health Organization and Infectious Diseases Society of America, have expressed this issue more elegantly and in greater detail (click on the links to check out), but it bears repeating: Drug discovery is tough. Discovering or creating a new (i.e. novel class of antibiotics) antibiotic […]
Shameless self-plug – but I had my first interview with Channel NewsAsia Live TV yesterday evening, on their “Between the Lines” program. It was on the novel antibiotic teixobactin and the iChip platform, and featured Dr Dallas Hughes (President of Novobiotic Pharmaceuticals LLC), as well as Prof Vinod K Paul (Head of Paediatrics at the […]
I have finally had the chance to read the Nature article (behind a pay wall) that has been making waves in the recent news, including the Guardian, Forbes and Bloomberg among others. The authors, who are from academic institutions in the USA (Boston) and Germany (Bonn), as well as a drug discovery company from the UK (Selcia, Ongar, […]
MIPHIDIC 