Had a little spare time on Tuesday, and visited this very small museum which is sited at St Mary’s Hospital in London. It was opened in 1993 with financial support from SmithKline Beecham (before the pharmaceutical company merged with Glaxo Wellcome to become GlaxoSmithKline), and the main attraction is the reconstruction of Alexander Fleming’s laboratory […]
In reference to the recent case vignette, the eponymous Dr André Alfred Lemierre – Professor of Bacteriology at the Claude Bernard Hospital – described the syndrome bearing his name in several papers, the most detailed being a report to the Lancet that was published on 28th March 1936. However, Dr Lemierre claimed that he was […]
A previously healthy young man (early 20’s) presented with severe left-sided sore throat, followed a day later by fever with chills, for 4 days. This was accompanied by lethargy and complete loss of appetite. He had seen a family doctor on the first day and was prescribed painkillers and antipyretics without significant relief. On clinical […]
A personal and primarily local look back at the year. What are the major infectious diseases events in modern Singapore in 2017? Outbreaks The World Health Organization (WHO) has a list of outbreaks by year on its website, and the 2017 list is depressingly long. There are the usual “suspects” like cholera (Africa) and diphtheria […]
A paper published in Lancet Infectious Diseases (behind a paywall) by researchers from the Institut Pasteur and the French National Reference Centre for Escherichia coli, Shigella and Salmonella generated much buzz online among those interested in antimicrobial resistance. They had studied 288 historical (1911-1969) isolates of Salmonella enterica serotype Typhimurium – a zoonotic bacterium that is one of the most common causes of non-typhoidal Salmonella […]
Sanofi-Pasteur released a media report on 29 November, warning that dengue-naive people would be at higher risk of a more severe infection if they were infected with dengue following vaccination with Dengvaxia – Sanofi Pasteur’s dengue vaccine that is also licensed for use in Singapore. This warning was based on the analysis of 6 years […]
It has been quite a long wait, but finally, investigators from the Environmental Health Institute (EHI – a part of the National Environment Agency) and the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) have published their work on tracing the source of the unusual ST283 Group B Streptococcus (GBS) that caused the huge raw freshwater fish-associated […]
I was privileged to be invited for the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) annual scientific retreat last Thursday and Friday. Unfortunately, I was only able to attend the Thursday sessions, but I was very impressed by the work done there. It is virtually all basic science, but the results of the metagenomics […]
While the first prize was the JC/Polytechnic section was deservedly awarded to Mstr Fong Khi Yung from Raffles Institution, for his work of futuristic fiction. More by the microscopic than the colossal On some evenings, I walk through the expressionless countryside fields undulating in the wind, gazing up at the crimson heavens and golden sunset […]
And the top prize for the Post-Antibiotic World Essay Competition goes to Chan Ger Hui. Well-deserved! A Post-Antibiotic World It all started with one small holiday And one very small spore. Stray fungi growing on a petri dish Was soon to be so much more. Remember for this discovery Fleming— But forget not Florey, Chain, […]
MIPHIDIC 