freediver
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http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking-news/us-set-to-approve-cattle-antibiotic/2007/03/04/1172943267143.html
The US Food and Drug Administration may be poised to approve a controversial antibiotic for cattle despite fears it could hurt human health, The Washington Post reports.
The drug, called cefquinome, is a fourth-generation cephalosporin, a class of antibiotics used for a range of human diseases including serious gastrointestinal diseases in children and meningitis.
The fear is that using such drugs in animals can lead to the emergence of new drug-resistant "superbugs" which will be immune to similar drugs when used in people.
The overuse of antibiotics in both humans and animals has already helped such bacteria evolve, and infectious disease experts have been warning doctors to use them more judiciously.
The FDA's own advisers, the Veterinary Medical Advisory Committee, voiced such concerns when they voted in September to reject approval of cefquinome, made by InterVet Inc. of Millsboro, Delaware.
Yet the Post quoted experts as saying the FDA was moving towards approval anyway, overriding the advice of the panel, the American Medical Association and other health groups.
[and in a direct contradiction of the precautionary principle:]
"The industry says that 'until you show us a direct link to human mortality from the use of these drugs in animals, we don't think you should preclude their use'," it quoted Belongia as saying.
Epidemic superbug strains evolved from one bacterium: study
http://news.smh.com.au/epidemic-superbug-strains-evolved-from-one-bacterium-study/20080122-1nfz.html
The drug-resistant "superbugs" that have cut a swathe through day care centers, schools, locker rooms and prisons across the United States in the last five years stem from one rapidly evolving bacterium, US scientists said Monday.
Scientists studying the genetic make-up of these bugs, which are resistant to almost all antibiotics, say they are nearly identical clones that have emerged from a single bacterial strain, which they have dubbed USA300.
"The USA300 group of strains appears to have extraordinary transmissibility and fitness," said Frank DeLeo, a researcher with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Hamilton, Montana.
"We anticipate that new USA300 derivatives will emerge within the next several years and that these strains will have a wide range of disease-causing potential."
Most drug-resistant staph infections cause soft-tissue infections such as boils that are readily treatable, but a skin infection can become a deadly pneumonia or blood or bone infection in a matter of days if the patient doesn't get the right drugs.
What's particularly worrying to health authorities is that the MRSA infections, (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) have spread beyond their traditional hospital setting, seeding an epidemic in the wider community.
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