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Category Archives: stewardship

News round-up!

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As promised, lots to catch up on — so here’s a quick round-up of some great reading that I have been stashing and that you may have missed in the past few weeks. BBC News: Disinfectants may train bacteria to resist antibioticsThe BBC Health page (bookmark it!) translates a paper from the journal Microbiology on Pseudomonas [...]

It’s (European) Antibiotic Awareness Day

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UK and EU readers can hug themselves with self-congratulation this morning (OK, admittedly, for you it’s afternoon already): It’s Antibiotic Awareness Day across the European Union, featuring a slate of public-awareness activities, public-service announcements, educational efforts, and random appearances by the charming little hedgehog above (kicking antibiotics, don’t you see). It’s all meant to convince [...]

Antibiotic-resistant infections: millions in cost to hospitals, families, all of us

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Folks, I mentioned that I’m way behind in working down a stack of great articles. Here’s a very good one that I missed when it came out two weeks ago and is well worth your time. A team from John H. Stroger Hospital (the new location of the iconic Cook County Hospital, public hospital for downtown [...]

Despite stewardship efforts, antibiotic use increasing

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Well, this is bad news. I hope we can all agree that antibiotic use creates antibiotic resistance. (Proof, if any were needed, that the universe has a captious sense of humor; but then it has had millennia to practice. OK, sorry for the anthropomorphizing.) The more pressure bacteria are placed under, the more resistant mutants emerge [...]

CDC educational campaign on antimicrobial resistance

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a long-running educational campaign called “Get Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work.” But with flu season starting, the agency has decided to make an extra push, hoping to prevent parents from asking pediatricians to prescribe antibiotics for colds and flu. (Which are, all together now: Viruses! And are not [...]

We pause in our goggle-eyed convention watching to bring you…

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[I'm sorry, faithful readers. It's the most compelling election of my voting lifetime. I'm riveted. Also, I spent hours in the ER Sunday getting stitched up from a bike crash. A very clean ER ... I hope.] … an intriguing paper on controlling antibiotic prescribing within health care institutions. Limiting inappropriate use of antibiotics is one of [...]

Oh no they *didn’t*…

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The Environmental Protection Agency will allow apple growers in Michigan to spray the human antibiotic gentamicin on apples to control an apple-tree disease, fire blight. This because the disease had already become resistant to a previously used, different human antibiotic, streptomycin. The Infectious Diseases Society of America tries to get them to see reason: “At a time when [...]

Antibiotics and the tragedy of the commons

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I’ve been turfing through the pile of research materials I’ve gathered over the past two years and finding gems I had forgotten about. Here’s one, from a post at Pioneering Ideas, a blog dealing with projects funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. One of RWJF’s projects is “Extending the Cure,” which seeks to reframe [...]