Chemotherapy sometimes set the stage for drug-resistant leukemia at relapse

Chemotherapy has helped make the most common childhood cancer one of the most curable, but researchers have evidence that the treatment may also prime some patients for relapse. Results published in the journal Blood reported that treatment-induced mutations cause drug resistance in some patients whose acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) returns. “Our study reveals the evolution dynamics of pediatric ALL, which […]

Continue reading »

New investigational antibiotic effective against drug-resistant bacteria in phase 2 trial

Results from a phase 2 randomised trial suggest that a new investigational antibiotic is as effective as the current standard-of-care antibiotic for the treatment of complicated urinary tract infections (UTIs) caused by several multidrug resistant Gram-negative bacteria. The findings, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, indicated that patients treated with the siderophore-based drug, cefiderocol, had a higher and more sustained […]

Continue reading »

New drug slashes death rates among drug-resistant TB patients: scientists

Credit: CC0 Public Domain A new treatment for a deadly drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis can cure more than 90 percent of sufferers, according to a landmark clinical trial whose results were revealed exclusively to AFP. Doctors in Belarus—a country with one of the world’s highest rates of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis—treated 181 patients with the new drug, bedaquiline, in combination with other […]

Continue reading »

Researchers cure drug-resistant infections without antibiotics

Biochemists, microbiologists, drug discovery experts and infectious disease doctors have teamed up in a new study that shows antibiotics are not always necessary to cure sepsis in mice. Instead of killing causative bacteria with antibiotics, researchers treated infected mice with molecules that block toxin formation in bacteria. Every treated mouse survived. The breakthrough study, published in Scientific Reports, suggests infections […]

Continue reading »

Phage therapy draws renewed interest to combat drug-resistant microbes

The married professors were spending their Thanksgiving holiday in Egypt when the husband, Thomas L. Patterson, Ph.D., got very sick very quickly, experiencing fever, nausea and a racing heartbeat. By the time Patterson was accurately diagnosed with a highly multi-drug resistant bacterial infection, he was near death. His wife, Steffanie Strathdee, Ph.D., promised to “leave no stone unturned.’” What happened […]

Continue reading »

Probe into farm animals could help treat drug-resistant bacteria

Growing threats to public health could be addressed by cutting-edge research that reveals how farm animals contribute to the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, a study suggests. Scientists are calling for new research combining genome analysis with studies that map the spread of infections to reveal how cows, pigs and chickens might play a role in helping drug-resistant bacteria to thrive. […]

Continue reading »

New treatment strategy exploits acquired vulnerability in drug-resistant melanoma

Cancer cells that develop resistance to drugs pay a price for this by simultaneously developing a new vulnerability. If this acquired vulnerability can be identified, it may be exploited clinically. A team of cancer researchers, led by Rene Bernards of the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Oncode Institute, have now exposed this acquired vulnerability in melanoma that has developed resistance to […]

Continue reading »

Super drug-resistant gonorrhea coming to U.S., experts say

(HealthDay)—Americans should expect that a super-resistant form of gonorrhea like that found in the United Kingdom will soon reach these shores, health experts say. Earlier this year, doctors diagnosed a man in England with a case of gonorrhea that could not be cured with antibiotics commonly deployed against the sexually transmitted bacteria. This was shocking to the public, but not […]

Continue reading »