Open Therapeutics

[virginiaadams]

Identify Vitamin D Deficiency

Nature is really great we almost get everything from it when we needed. No doubt all readers heard about Vitamin D, we get this from types of foods, the sunlight apart from this there are people with a high hazard for not having enough vitamin D specially for a age of people living above 65. Do you had enough information about vitamin d deficiency? If not i would recommend people to read symptoms of Vitamin d deficiency to tackle the health risk.

[Anthropoid]

Science Career Ads Are Disproportionately Seen by Men

Marketing algorithms prevent many women from seeing the advertising, even though it’s illegal to target jobs to one gender


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-career-ads-are-disproportionately-seen-by-men/

[Anthropoid]

Ethereum blockchain used to expose China’s pharma giant, Changchun Changsheng Biotechnology, for supplying inferior baby vaccines

#Ethereum [ETH] used to expose China’s pharma giant, Changchun Changsheng Biotechnology, for supplying inferior baby vaccineshttps://t.co/SxFZ8HvdhQ#vaccinations #supplychain #pharma #blockchain

— Knowbella Tech (@knowbella) July 27, 2018

[Anthropoid]

The NIH made large-scale CT images dataset publicly available to help the scientific community improve detection accuracy of lesions; this dataset, named DeepLesion, has over 32,000 annotated lesions identified on CT image.


https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-center-releases-dataset-32000-ct-images

[Anthropoid]

NIH researchers identify sequence leading to release of malaria parasites from red blood cells

Findings could inform the development of new antimalarial drugs.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-researchers-identify-sequence-leading-release-malaria-parasites-red-blood-cells

[Anthropoid]

Although more than 2,000 scientific publishers operate just five private companies account for over half of all articles published.

Means higher prices, less choice, and censorship.

https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/07/07/scientific-publishing-is-rigged-at-our-expense/

[Anthropoid]

A New Open Source Imaging System

The open source movement has facilitated the development of low cost and easy-to-use technologies for scientific settings. A study published in PLOS ONE describes the creation of a novel multi-fluorescence imaging system from readily available, low cost components.

https://therapoid.net/en/forums/forum/oncolytic-herpes-simplex-virus-ohsv-gluc-for-cancer-screening-forum-129/topic/a-new-open-source-imaging-system-108/

[Anthropoid]

Breast cancer patient benefits from modified immunotherapy

June 26, 2018

At a Glance

Researchers designed a novel approach to immunotherapy that led to the complete regression of breast cancer in a patient for whom all other treatments failed.
This case study and other results from the ongoing trial show the potential of immunotherapy to target diverse tumors based on their DNA mutations.

All cancerous growths have disappeared after 22 months.

Top, a tumor invading the chest wall. Bottom, metastatic lesions in the liver. Arrows point to the cancerous growths before treatment. Right, 22 months after treatment.NCI

Each cancer is driven by a unique combination of genetic changes, or mutations. That’s what makes many cancers so difficult to treat. Adoptive cell transfer (ACT) is a type of personalized immunotherapy treatment that aims to boost the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. First, tumor-killing immune cells called tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) are harvested from the tumor. The cells that are most active against the cancer are grown into large batches in the lab and then infused back into the patient.

ACT has been effective in treating cancers that have many DNA mutations, such as melanoma (skin cancer). However, it’s been less effective with other common cancers, such as stomach, esophageal, ovarian, and breast cancers. This is because these cancers have fewer DNA mutations, making it difficult to identify and target them using ACT.

In an ongoing phase 2 clinical trial, a team led by Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg at NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) has been developing a form of ACT using TILs that target specific tumor mutations. The team recently had success treating a patient with metastatic breast cancer who enrolled in the trial after receiving several treatments, including chemotherapy and hormonal treatments, that did not stop her cancer. The case report was published in Nature Medicine on June 24, 2018.

The researchers first sequenced both DNA and RNA from the patient’s tumors. They compared the results with sequences taken from her normal tissue. They were able to identify 62 mutations that were unique to the tumor cells.

The researchers developed a procedure to find TILs from the tumor that recognize the altered proteins made from the mutated genes. Using this approach, they found TILs that recognized four altered proteins. These TILs were grown into large batches in the lab and infused back into the patient. The patient was also given interleukin-2 to boost the TIL infusion. In addition, she was given a drug called pembrolizumab to prevent a process by which tumors inactivate TILs.

After this protocol, the patient’s cancer entirely disappeared. More than 22 months later, it hadn’t returned. The infused TILs were still found in the patient’s blood up to 17 months after the treatment.

“We’ve developed a high-throughput method to identify mutations present in a cancer that are recognized by the immune system,” Rosenberg says. “This research is experimental right now. But because this new approach to immunotherapy is dependent on mutations, not on cancer type, it is in a sense a blueprint we can use for the treatment of many types of cancer.”

Investigators have also had success using mutation-targeted TIL treatments for patients in the same trial with other cancers, including liver cancer and colorectal cancer. The trial is testing a series of different drugs and approaches to improve ACT for the treatment of a broad spectrum of cancers.


https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/breast-cancer-patient-benefits-modified-immunotherapy

[Anthropoid]

Do certain viruses contribute to Alzheimer’s?

@NIH -funded study finds new evidence that viruses may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-funded-study-finds-new-evidence-viruses-may-play-role-alzheimers-disease

[Anthropoid]

New Blockchain-Based Supply Chain System Is Presented by Microsoft and Ardents

Microsoft has partnered with Ardents, a supply tracking solutions provider, to develop a new product tracking platform using blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI), Food Engineering reported June 14.

The new blockchain solution, which is called Ardents NovaTrack, was presented at Viva Tech 2018 in Paris. The system offers end-to-end traceability and visibility from the point of origin along the whole supply chain, allowing users to trace single product items within a case. The product was initially designed for the pharmaceutical industry in order to fight distribution of fraudulent copies of drugs, but the developers are reportedly targeting other high-value industries.

Ardents NovaTrack applies such technologies as blockchain, AI, IoT and serialization functions, where AI is provided by Microsoft Learning and Business Intelligence. Christophe Devins, founder and CEO of Adents commented on the collaboration:

“Our alliance with Microsoft to co-develop Adents NovaTrack will offer game-changing blockchain-based unit identification for various industries around the world. Our deep roots and successes in serialization and traceability, enhanced by Microsoft Azure Cloud technology, will provide our clients total transparency all along their supply chains and secure product authenticity for end users.”

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an estimated 10 percent of pharmaceutical products sold worldwide and 2.5 percent of global imports are counterfeit. Last month, U.S.-based life science research marketplace Scientist.com revealed a new blockchain platform designed to track and protect pharmaceutical data. Within the project, blockchain technology will reportedly be used to verify and validate the entire supply chain.

In April, U.S. retail corporation Walmart announced it was ready to use blockchain in its live food business. The company is looking for suppliers to put food on a blockchain which they claim will reduce waste, as well as improve contamination management and transparency.

Swiss airport ground handling and cargo company Swissport revealed its plans to launch a blockchain pilot program for its cargo handling business, aiming to develop an open source platform for supply chain partners.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-blockchain-based-supply-chain-system-is-presented-by-microsoft-and-ardents

[Anthropoid]

Proposed EU copyright reform attacks Open Science?

EU copyright reforms draw fire from scientists
Planned changes threaten open science, research advocates warn.

Quirin Schiermeier


An influential committee of the European Parliament is due to vote this month on changes to copyright regulations in the European Union, but the latest drafts of the rules have triggered a wave of criticism from open-science advocates. They say that the proposals will stifle research and scholarly communication.

Intellectual-property experts agree that existing EU copyright rules need an overhaul for the digital age, and a proposal first circulated by the European Commission in 2016 had this goal in mind. But critics worry that some provisions in more-recent proposals for the law — known as the directive on copyright in the digital single market — conflict with Europe’s principles of open science and freedom of expression.

“Copyright law must not hamper open science,” says Vanessa Proudman, European director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), a science-advocacy group in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. “The EU has made significant headway towards open access of research funded by European citizens. The proposed new rules would clearly impede further progress, threatening the visibility of Europe’s research,” she says.

Concerns focus on a provision that would let publishers claim royalties for the use of snippets of information, such as tables or headlines. This was included with the aim of enabling news publishers to secure revenue from social-media platforms such as Facebook and Google. But a proposal added by a European Parliament committee would mean that the provision also applies to academic publications.

Many scholarly publishers, including the International Association for Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), based in Oxford, UK, support this amendment. But open-research advocates say that facts and information in a scientific article must remain free from copyright. “We really don’t want further paywalls on top of any research materials libraries have paid for already,” says Maria Rehbinder, a copyright specialist in Finland with the Association of European Research Libraries.

Some researchers express concern that the proposed rule might even force scientists to pay fees to publishers for references they include in their own publications. But STM “cannot envisage any situation where students and researchers would need to pay fees” for citations, says Matt McKay, a spokesperson for the association.

Extra burdens

The EU copyright law, as written, would also compel repositories of research articles to prevent uploads of copyrighted papers and other content. Currently, the onus is on academic publishers to issue take-down notices for papers illegally posted to repositories.

The scholarly social network ResearchGate, for example, has in recent months disabled public access to more than 1.7 million papers on its site, in compliance with take-down messages by publishers. This process of removing articles upon request, says Proudman, works well and effectively for institutional repositories. Forcing all existing non-profit educational and research-data services, including more than 1,000 university repositories, to seek copyright licences and install upload filters would overburden most institutions, she says. “The proposed level of surveillance would put science repositories in the same boat as Facebook or YouTube,” she says, by requiring them to scan submissions for possible copyright violations.

The proposed rules aren’t all bad news for science, says Marie Timmermann, who is in charge of EU legislation and regulatory affairs at Science Europe, an association of national research-funding agencies in Brussels. Text-mining — whereby researchers use computer programs to extract data automatically from large numbers of texts — is exempted from the copyright law, when carried out in the public interest. Scientists at public research organizations would be allowed to harvest facts and data from all sources they have legal access to read.

However, this exemption does not extend to companies — a possible problem for EU-funded research projects, which increasingly include commercial partners, Timmermann notes.

The European Parliament legal committee’s vote on the law, scheduled for 23–24 April, will be a crucial test of whether lawmakers are listening to scientists’ concerns. The precise version the committee will consider has not yet been finalized and circulated, and the final law will also need to be approved by the entire parliament and by EU member states before it can come into effect, due for next year. “For the sake of European research, we hope the worst flaws will yet be deleted,” Timmerman says.

Nature 556, 14-15 (2018)

doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-03837-7

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03837-7

[Anthropoid]

Can Blockchain Technology put an end to Counterfeit Drugs?

Roughly 50% of drugs consumed in developing nations are counterfeit

The global pharmaceutical industry is faced with a growing counterfeit drugs market, a serious concern that is a strong deterrent to generic and innovative industries. Most importantly, it puts millions of lives at stake. According to the World Health Organization, roughly 50% of drugs consumed in developing nations are counterfeit. Among these, most are antibiotics and antimalarials. These drugs can harm patients and fail to treat the diseases they are treated for. Furthermore, they can hurt the reputation of the original product.

How Grave is The Problem

A report from the US International Trade Administration on The Pharmaceutical Market states that the size of the global counterfeit drug market ranges between $75 to $200 billion and comprises of 50% of all drugs sold in low-income nations. Such illegal operations have caused over 100,000 deaths across the globe, with the expenses in lost profits rendered by pharmaceutical companies touching $18 billion annually. The report suggests various ways to counteract the increase in fake drugs in the market, which includes the use of Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID) and implementation of powerful state licensure supervision of suppliers to precisely segregate real drugs.

The counterfeiting trade has become more profitable than the narcotics business. And experts state that finding a permanent solution to it or stemming the tide entails active participation of both the industry and government.

Some of the top counterfeit drug types are as follows:

Cytostatic
Central nervous system
Cardiovascular
Anti-infectives
Alimentary

One prominent stakeholder that’s fighting fake drugs is the Pharmaceutical Security Institute. Thomas Kubic, PSI chief executive, states that there were 2,003 incidents involving 808 various drug products that were counterfeited, stolen or illegally diverted in 2016.

Counterfeits are also on the rise in developed nations mainly because of the prevalence of online pharmacies. The FDA routinely purchases drugs on the internet and finds that more than 50% are fake. According to the National Crime Prevention Council, the traffic in counterfeit drugs poses a massive threat to all Americans and people in other countries.

INTERPOL conducts yearly operations to crackdown on unauthorized sale of medicines, medical equipment and devices. During its operation in 2016, it seized over $53 million of potentially fatal medicines and blocked 4,932 websites selling illegal drugs. INTERPOL had also seized harmful drugs worldwide worth $6.3 million in 2011. While these facts highlight the success of authorities, it also shows the huge growth of counterfeit pharmaceuticals over the years.

Can Blockchain Be The Solution?

Blockchain technology is popularly known as email for money; however, it has the potential to be so much more. To date, blockchain applications mainly focus on the financial world but this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other industries that are putting blockchain technology to good use. And among them is the pharmaceutical industry.

Blockchain technology stops the entry of fake drugs into the supply chain, mainly the part between the manufacturer and consumer. The technology uses a highly scalable transparent protocol in order to assign every manufactured product an asset. These assets are then added to the blockchain and assigned a unique identification number, commonly referred to as hash.

The technology then verifies the hashes to find out whether or not the product in question is counterfeit or legitimate. Whether it’s a tablet, a handbag or a medicine, every product in the world can be verified using this technology. An interesting part of this technology is that anyone can get access to the blockchain and conduct his own product verifications. On top of that, it avoids malicious groups or individuals from creating duplicate items.

Blockchain creates a visible supply chain where all entities like suppliers, vendors, distributors and partners are brought together in a close-knit and comprehensive manner. It keeps record of all transactions and makes every necessary detail like location, quality, price and other data visible to all concerned parties while lessening the tampering of records. The supply chain is made transparent, secure, decentralized and verifiable besides plugging loopholes in the supply of authentic medicines and trimming costs involved in detecting faulty areas.

Blockchain is a wonderful platform to increase transparency and trust, with customers being able to keep a track on pharmaceutical products throughout the supply chain. Only trusted parties are allowed to write on the blockchain. Manufacturers and consumers can scan the bar code and view the history. The platform also notifies whenever a counterfeit drug is found.

One of the major issues to be taken into consideration is the change of ownership of a particular drug. Fear not as the technology provides absolute verification on the ownership

In short, blockchain tracks pharmaceuticals throughout the supply chain and ensure that consumers receive authentic products.

Startups Engaging in Blockchain Technology in The Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

Companies like LinkLab, iSolve, LifeCrypter and BlockVerify and a few more are actively working to find blockchain solutions that bring transparency, traceability and integrity to the global drug supply chain.

In November 2016, Chronicled launched CryptoSeal, representing a major step forward in making the supply chain more genuine. Each CryptoSeal contain a Near Field Communication (NFC) chip installed with a unique identity number, which is registered and verified on a blockchain. Besides a product’s identity, the CryptoSeal also records the identity of its registrant and packaging, also known as asset metadata on to the blockchain.

London-based anti-counterfeit solution provider, BlockVerify, has started focusing their efforts on the pharmaceutical industry. They plan to give every drug its own permanent record on the blockchain, which will make manipulation of private keys an impossible task. The system will also be able to identify stolen drugs, diverted goods, and fraudulent transactions.

Final Thoughts

By implementing blockchain technology, pharmaceutical supply chain stakeholders can significantly improve their efficiency while distributing verifiable medications all across the globe. Patients also stand to gain by independently verifying the products.

At the end of the day, a transparent and secure supply chain is important for companies spending billions of dollars on R&D to come up with innovative formulas and also for millions of patients who rely on life-saving drugs.


https://www.drugpatentwatch.com/blog/can-blockchain-technology-put-an-end-to-counterfeit-drugs/amp/

[Anthropoid]

Analysis of Fusobacterium persistence and antibiotic response in colorectal cancer

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/11/20/science.aal5240

[Anthropoid]

Ebola is back.

The disease that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa just a few years ago has returned, striking the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1049

[Anthropoid]

Which companies will benefit from the Ebola vaccine?

Ebola is back. The disease that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa just a few years ago has returned, striking the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6393/1049

[Anthropoid]

Science benefits from diversity

Improving the participation of under-represented groups is not just fairer — it could produce better research.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05326-3

[Anthropoid]

Researchers and academics, so far 17,050, have signed a protest against Elsevier.

#OpenAccess #OpenScience

http://thecostofknowledge.com

[Anthropoid]

Remodeling legacy antibiotics for new drugs that fight emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02123-w

[Anthropoid]

US witnesses alarming rise in STD 'epidemic': California on front line with over 300 cases of congenital syphilis in 2017

https://www.firstpost.com/world/us-witnesses-alarming-rise-in-std-epidemic-california-on-front-line-with-over-300-cases-of-congenital-syphilis-in-2017-4494583.html

[Anthropoid]

Who gets credit for CRISPR? Prestigious award singles out three, and leaves out a notable scientist

One of the world’s richest science awards, given only in alternate years, will go to three discoverers of the CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing tool, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced on Thursday. Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Virginijus Šikšnys of Vilnius University will each receive a gold medal and share the $1 million that comes with the Kavli Prize in nanoscience (there are also Kavli prizes for astrophysics and neuroscience).

It was only the latest verdict on the controversial question of who deserves credit for turning a bacterial immune system into a revolutionary genome-editing tool. As multiple companies worth billions of dollars race to turn CRISPR into a human therapeutic, everyone from prize juries to patent offices to U.S. judges (to, perhaps, Nobel committees) is clashing over who did what when and how important their contribution was. And in a reminder that the patent system lives in its own odd world, a scientist who has won far fewer awards for his CRISPR work, Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, nevertheless holds the key CRISPR patents, a situation that UC is hotly contesting on behalf of Doudna and Charpentier.

Teams led by that duo and, separately, by Šikšnys first showed that the immune system of bacteria, CRISPR, could be paired with the Cas9 enzyme to alter purified DNA floating outside cells, in test tubes. Their seminal achievement was to show what specific molecular components, including RNA, are necessary to turn CRISPR into a genome-editor.

But bad luck with a journal made Šikšnys the forgotten man of CRISPR: Cell rejected his paper in April 2012 without sending it out for peer review. In contrast, when Doudna, Charpentier, and their colleagues showed that Cas9 could be programmed to cut DNA, their paper sped through the review process at Science and was published online in late June 2012. Šikšnys and his co-authors, meanwhile, had scrambled to find a more receptive journal and landed at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which published their paper three months after the Berkeley team’s.

Both groups knew what they had. The Šikšnys team said its findings “pave the way for engineering of universal programmable RNA-guided” DNA-cutting enzymes, while Team Doudna pointed out that CRISPR could be exploited “for RNA-programmable genome editing.’’

That’s only the beginning of the tangled history of CRISPR credit. In early 2013, Harvard biologist George Church and the Broad’s Zhang published simultaneous papers showing that CRISPR can be programmed to cut the genome inside human cells, a step toward turning CRISPR into a disease treatment. By then seemingly everyone had filed for patents, and Zhang, though he filed after Doudna and Charpentier, was awarded foundational CRISPR patents starting in 2014. Those are now the subject of a bitter, years-long, but with any luck almost-at-an-end legal dispute pitting financially strapped UC against the mega-endowment Broad.

Since the Broad has won all the legal rounds so far, those rooting for Doudna and Charpentier point to a profound disconnect between law and science: The duo has almost run the table of major awards for CRISPR. They shared the 2015 Breakthrough Prize, the 2015 Gruber Prize in genetics, the 2016 Warren Alpert Prize (with Šikšnys, Rodolphe Barrangou, and Philippe Horvath), and several others. The Kavli nanoscience prize, chosen by a committee of five physicists, is now the latest.

Related: As CRISPR patent fight nears the endgame, where are settlement talks?
Zhang, in contrast, shared the 2016 Gairdner International Award with Doudna and Charpentier and two other scientists for developing CRISPR-Cas “as a genome editing tool for eukaryotic cells.” The trio also shared the 2014 Gabbay Award, the 2016 Tang Prize, and others. Zhang won last year’s Lemelson-MIT award solo.

The Kavli committee bars reporters from contacting the winners, who learned the news only this morning, in advance, or asking CRISPR watchers what they think the latest prize might mean for the prestigious ones awarded every October.

https://www.statnews.com/2018/05/31/crispr-scientists-kavli-prize-nanoscience/

[Anthropoid]

Joint Roadmap for Open Science Tools was launched in April 2018.

A community working on a joint roadmap for open science tools.

It is only "open" to not-for-profits.

For-profits contribute a lot of knowledge to open source endeavors.

Excluding for-profits doesn't seem to be "open" @OpenSciRoadmap

JROST

[Anthropoid]

NIH study finds gut microbiome can control antitumor immune function in liver

Scientists have found a connection between bacteria in the gut and antitumor immune responses in the liver.

Their study, published online May 24 in Science, was led by researchers in the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

It showed that bacteria found in the gut of mice affect the liver’s antitumor immune function.

The findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms that lead to liver cancer and for therapeutic approaches to treat them. NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds-gut-microbiome-can-control-antitumor-immune-function-liver

[Anthropoid]

A 2018 Orphan Drug Report shows continuing unmet medical need is set to fuel the growth of the worldwide orphan drug market with sales predicted to grow at over 11% a year to $262bn by 2024.

By 2024, orphan drugs will represent over a fifth of the worldwide prescription market.

Despite a slowdown in pricing, the report shows that the mean cost per patient per year still managed to hit $147,308 in 2017, more than four times the mean cost for non-orphan drugs at $30,708.

http://info.evaluategroup.com/OD2018-LP.html

[Anthropoid]

Mini-antibodies discovered in sharks and camels could lead to drugs for cancer and other diseases

Helen Dooley admits that she often gets puzzled responses when she describes her work. "People say, ‘You bleed sharks for a living?’"

That's an overstatement, but every couple of weeks she and a helper drop by several large fiberglass tanks at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology on the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. They net a cat shark or nurse shark and wrestle it into a small pool of water that contains a mild sedative. The drug calms the shark so they can lift it from the water and puncture a vein in its tail. Drawing a few milliliters of blood "doesn't take more than a few seconds," Dooley says, after which they return the animal to its aquarium to recover. "They're usually swimming about perfectly normally, and looking for food, after only a minute or so."

Dooley, an immunologist at the University of Maryland (UMD) School of Medicine in Baltimore, has been tapping shark blood for 2 decades for the same reason that other researchers have been draining the veins of llamas, camels, and their relatives. All those animals pump out unusual, diminutive antibodies that are only about half the size of the conventional versions....

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/mini-antibodies-discovered-sharks-and-camels-could-lead-drugs-cancer-and-other-diseases

[Anthropoid]

A Warming Climate May Produce More Drug-Resistant Infections

Hotter temperatures can lead to increased growth and genetic mutations

[Comment: but since there is no climate change according to non-scientific politicians, this doesn't apply.]

A person’s chances of acquiring a drug-resistant infection may be higher if she lives in a warmer area.

A study appearing today in Nature Climate Change from researchers at the University of Toronto (U.T.) and Boston Children’s Hospital links the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria to a hotter climate. Researchers found a 10-degree Celsius increase in daily minimum temperature was associated with a small increase in resistance in common pathogens, including those that develop into methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the root of many persistent and sometimes deadly hospital infections. “This is a very important and timely study stemming from meticulously collected and arranged records of antibiotic resistance,” says Elena Naumova, an epidemiologist at Tufts University who was not involved in the work. “What’s great about this study is that they really broaden the concept of antibiotic-resistance patterns.”

Scientists have long observed bacteria in the laboratory grow and reproduce more quickly at warmer temperatures. And increased growth can cause a hike in resistant strains when DNA mutations crop up during reproduction. Bacteria can also swap DNA with one another and spread resistance via a process called horizontal gene transfer, which also increases at higher temperatures. Now scientists are asking if this phenomenon also occurs outside the laboratory.

The research was enabled by a large-scale data collection effort to create a free and open Web-based application that gives the geographical locations of drug-resistant bacteria. The site, called Resistance Open, allows anyone in the world to punch in their postal code and see which drug-resistant infections are present in their hometown. “For a physician, they can have a better understanding of what is happening in the community rather than just in their hospital,” says John Brownstein, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-senior author of the study. And the tool allows scientists to see new patterns in drug resistance, such as how it may be affected by climate.

The team first had to scour hospital records for the results of clinical sensitivity tests—diagnostics to determine how well various antibiotics work against bacterial infections. This was a labor-intensive and time-consuming task as most hospitals keep this data locked in pdf files that are difficult to access with current data-mining tools. In the end, the team collected data from 223 different facilities across 41 states. They analyzed the results of 22.8 million diagnostic tests representing 1.6 million bacterial strains. The researchers focused on three of the most common drug-resistant strains: Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus, which are known to cause drug resistant urinary, skin and blood infections, respectively.

They found a 10-degree C increase in temperature was associated with increases in antibiotic resistance of 4, 2 and 3 percent for E. coli, K. pneumoniae and S. aureus, respectively. Minimum temperature was used because it is a more accurate predictor of the persistence and continued growth of bacteria than is average temperature, which can represent big swings in highs and lows. The effect was significant even after the researchers controlled for antibiotic prescription rate, population density and laboratory standards. “Places in the South tend to show more resistance than places in the North, and a good chunk of that variability can be explained by temperature,” Brownstein says.

In a separate analysis his team found an uptick in population density by 10,000 persons per square mile was independently linked to a 3 to 6 percent increase in resistance. They posit increased bacterial transmission may have occurred in more densely populated areas. The researchers also found overprescription leads to increased resistance. Taken together, the findings suggest these three factors—temperature, population density and prescription rates—are all responsible for driving the growth of drug-resistant bacteria.

The results spell trouble for a world that is growing hotter and more crowded. Derek MacFadden, an infectious disease expert at U.T. and a co-lead author of the study, stresses current estimates of the spread of drug-resistant infections may be understated because they do not take into account the warming climate and population growth.

“The minimum temperatures are going to keep going up. We will have increased population density and there is evidence that antibiotic prescription rates are going up,” says Lance Price, a biologist at The George Washington University who was not involved in the study. “So I think that we are going to have a problem.” He stresses that curbing antibiotic use in humans and farm animals is one thing we can do now to help this escalating issue: “If we don’t take care of this, then the piece that will change will be population density, because people will be dying.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-warming-climate-may-produce-more-drug-resistant-infections/

[Anthropoid]

NIH begins testing Ebola treatment in early-stage trial

Scientists developed monoclonal antibody from Ebola survivor.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-begins-testing-ebola-treatment-early-stage-trial