BACKGROUND Antimicrobial resistance is driven by multiple factors. Resolving the threat to human and animal health presented by drug-resistant infections remains a societal challenge that demands close collaboration between scientists and citizens. We compared current public views about key contributing factors to antimicrobial resistance with those expressed by experts. METHODS Overarching f...

Fungal resistance to traditional drugs calls for new antimicrobial agents. In mammals, defensins and cathelicidins are two major families of antimicrobial peptides. Cathelicidins are cationic peptides with a conserved N-terminal cathelin-like domain and a variable C-terminal antimicrobial domain. Cathelicidins rapidly kill Candida and other yeast spp.1 Candida infection with C albicans is the f...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMP) are a promising source of antibiotics with a broad spectrum activity against bacteria and low incidence of developing resistance. The mechanism by which an AMP executes its function depends on a set of computable physicochemical properties from the amino acid sequence. Peptides package was designed for allowing the quick and easy computation of ten structural charac...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are diverse, biologically active, essential components of the innate immune system. As compared to conventional antibiotics, AMPs exhibit broad spectrum antimicrobial activity, reduced toxicity and reduced microbial resistance. They are widely researched for their therapeutic potential, especially against multi-drug resistant pathogens. AMPs are known to have famil...

We conducted a retrospective study of Escherichia coli isolates recovered from human and food animal samples during 1950-2002 to assess historical changes in antimicrobial drug resistance. A total of 1,729 E. coli isolates (983 from humans, 323 from cattle, 138 from chickens, and 285 from pigs) were tested for susceptibility to 15 antimicrobial drugs. A significant upward trend in resistance wa...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have recently attracted a great deal of attention as promising antibiotic candidates, but some obstacles such as toxicity and high synthesis cost must be addressed before developing them further. For developing short peptides with improved cell selectivity, we designed a series of modified PMAP-36 analogues. Antimicrobial assays showed that decreasing chain length ...

Antiretroviral drug resistance and escape from CTL are major obstacles to effective control of HIV replication. To investigate the possibility of combining drug and immune-based selective pressures against HIV, we studied the effects of antiretroviral drug resistance mutations on CTL recognition of five HIV-1 Pol epitopes presented by common HLA molecules. We found that these common drug resist...

PhoQ is a membrane bound sensor kinase important for the pathogenesis of a number of Gram-negative bacterial species. PhoQ and its cognate response regulator PhoP constitute a signal-transduction cascade that controls inducible resistance to host antimicrobial peptides. We show that enzymatic activity of Salmonella typhimurium PhoQ is directly activated by antimicrobial peptides. A highly acidi...

Much of the improvement in the survival of individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF) is due to advancements in antimicrobial treatments. New aerosolized antibiotic formulations have recently been introduced (such as inhaled aztreonam), and others are in development (inhaled levofloxacin and liposomal amikacin). Licensed dry powder formulations include tobramycin inhalation powder and dry powder col...