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Reduced Risk from Appendix, Bowel or Birth
April 02, 2003The risk of life threatening infection after a burst appendix, childbirth or bowel surgery has just been reduced, according to medical researchers who have discovered how a particularly dangerous bacterium fools our body's defences. The findings are presented today, Tuesday 8 April 2003, by Dr Sheila Patrick at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Meeting in Edinburgh.
"Up to a third of the people who got these infections used to die in the days before we had effective antibiotics," says Dr Sheila Patrick from Queen's University, Belfast. "The culprit, called Bacteroides fragilis, lives in huge numbers in normal healthy human intestines. Up to half of our faeces are made up of these bacteria. But if they escape into other parts of the body they will cause serious infections."
At present doctors can use one very effective antibiotic to fight these infections, but some resistant bacteria have now appeared, and they fear that resistance may spread as it has in other types of bacteria.
"In a collaboration between Queen's University of Belfast, the University of Edinburgh and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, we have discovered one of the genetic mechanisms that allows this bacterium to make an amazing variety of components on its cell surfaces, which help it fool our defences. Only one other known bacterium, a type of Salmonella, uses a similar mechanism," says Dr Patrick. "We have also found out where all the genes are on the B. fragilis chromosome, and discovered what many of them do, through the genome sequencing project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, funded by the Wellcome Trust."
These two vital bits of information should allow the researchers to develop new effective antibiotics in the future, if the bacteria become more resistant to the ones in use at the moment.
"It is vital that we can continue with operations such as hysterectomy and gastro-intestinal surgery, and can treat peritonitis after a burst appendix or uterine infections after childbirth," says Dr Patrick. "We are in a race with the bacteria. If we do not come up with a winning strategy before resistance spreads, we could return to the pre-antibiotic levels of deaths from infection."
Society for General Microbiology
"In a collaboration between Queen's University of Belfast, the University of Edinburgh and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, we have discovered one of the genetic mechanisms that allows this bacterium to make an amazing variety of components on its cell surfaces, which help it fool our defences. Only one other known bacterium, a type of Salmonella, uses a similar mechanism," says Dr Patrick. "We have also found out where all the genes are on the B. fragilis chromosome, and discovered what many of them do, through the genome sequencing project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, funded by the Wellcome Trust."
These two vital bits of information should allow the researchers to develop new effective antibiotics in the future, if the bacteria become more resistant to the ones in use at the moment.
"It is vital that we can continue with operations such as hysterectomy and gastro-intestinal surgery, and can treat peritonitis after a burst appendix or uterine infections after childbirth," says Dr Patrick. "We are in a race with the bacteria. If we do not come up with a winning strategy before resistance spreads, we could return to the pre-antibiotic levels of deaths from infection."
Society for General Microbiology
Bacteria Current Events and Bacteria News RSSFactors from common human bacteria may trigger multiple sclerosis
Current research suggests that a common oral bacterium may exacerbate autoimmune disease. The related report by Nichols et al, "Unique Lipids from a Common Human Bacterium Represent a New Class of TLR2 Ligands Capable of Enhancing Autoimmunity," appears in the December 2009 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.
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Beyond sunlight: Explorers census 17,650 ocean species between edge of darkness and black abyss
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Surface bacteria maintain skin's healthy balance
On the skin's surface, bacteria are abundant, diverse and constant, but inflammation is undesirable. Research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine now shows that the normal bacteria living on the skin surface trigger a pathway that prevents excessive inflammation after injury.
On the Trail of a Vaccine for Lyme Disease: Yale Researchers Target Tick Saliva
A protein found in the saliva of ticks helps protect mice from developing Lyme disease, Yale researchers have discovered. The findings, published in the November 19 issue of Cell Host & Microbe, may spur development of a new vaccine against infection from Lyme disease, which is spread through tick bites.
Cigarettes Harbor Many Bacteria Harmful to Human Health
Cigarettes are "widely contaminated" with bacteria, including some known to cause disease in people, concludes a new international study conducted by a University of Maryland environmental health researcher and microbial ecologists at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon in France.
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