drug resistance

(MedPage Today) -- Drug resistance in tuberculosis appears to have reached a peak in several patients in India, who are virtually untreatable with available medications.

Global deaths from malaria are falling, but the World Health Organization warns of potential trouble ahead from drug-resistance and a shortage of funds.

(American Society for Microbiology) Antivirulence drugs disarm pathogens rather than kill them, and although they could be effective in theory, antivirulence drugs have never been tested in humans.

A new study to be published in the online journal mBio on Tuesday, Oct. 18 reveals these drugs have the potential to fight infection while avoiding the pitfalls of drug resistance.

It may be possible to extend the usefulness of cancer drugs by preventing drug resistance in tumours, say researchers.

(Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News) E. coli bacteria exposed to three common antibiotics were more likely to develop antibiotic resistance following low-level antibiotic exposure than after exposure to high concentrations that would kill the bacteria or inhibit their growth, according to a timely article in Microbial Drug Resistance, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert Inc.

(Genetics Society of America) Scientists from the University of Oxford, UK have taken lessons from Adam Smith and Charles Darwin to devise a new strategy that could one day slow, possibly even prevent, the spread of drug-resistant bacteria.

The scientists show that bacterial gene mutations that lead to drug resistance come at a biological cost not borne by nonresistant strains.

(Centenary Institute) New research from the Centenary Institute has discovered a treatment that kills ovarian cancer cells in a way that can break the resistance mechanism -- even in those resistant to cisplatin.

(University of Illinois at Chicago) Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have found how gene expression that may contribute to drug resistance is ramped up in unusual types of breast cancer tumors.

Their findings may offer new therapy targets.

Primary care patients prescribed an antibiotic for a urinary tract or respiratory infection consistently developed resistance to that antibiotic lasting as long as one year, a British meta-analysis revealed.

(UT Southwestern Medical Center) Two new tuberculosis studies by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers provide good news and bad news about the bacterium that infects nearly a third of the world's population and a disease that kills nearly 2 million people each year.