Germ Warfare? Strategies for Reducing the Spread of Antibiotic Resistance

Germ Warfare? Strategies for Reducing the Spread of Antibiotic Resistance

A growing body of literature describes how human pathogens in the environment acquire antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), a process potentially boosted by selection pressure from antibiotics. Contaminated water and soil may then maintain and spread these antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and ARGs. A review in this issue of EHP examines strategies for reducing environmental pollution with anti...

Modeling the Spread of Antibiotic Resistance

This paper describes a stochastic implementation of Austin et al.’s (1999) model of the spread of antibiotic resistance in a population of fixed size under varying conditions of antibiotic use. The population is divided into sub-groups: individuals colonized by commensal bacteria and an uncolonized group. The colonized group is further divided according to whether the commensal bacteria are sen...

Germ warfare.

Background: The major bottleneck for determination of 3 D structures of proteins using X-rays is the production of diffraction quality crystals. Often proteins are subjected to chemical modification to improve the chances of crystallization Results: Here, we report the successful crystallization of a nuclease employing a reductive methylation protocol. The key to crystallization was the success...

Antibiotic Resistance: Origins, Evolution, Selection and Spread

Antibiotic resistance thwarts the treatment of infectious diseases worldwide. Although a number of factors can be identified which contribute to the problem, clearly the antibiotic as a selective agent and the resistance gene as the vehicle of resistance are the two most important, making up a 'drug resistance equation'. Both are needed in order for a clinical problem to arise. Given sufficient...

Antibiotic resistance: epidemiology and strategies for prevention.