Antibiotics, Antidepressants, and Opioids Found in Puget Sound Shellfish

by the bioMérieux Connection Editors As “filter feeders,” mussels provide a great method for detecting pollutants in waterways. If it’s there, mussels will ingest it. With this in mind, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) started the Puget Sound Mussel Monitoring Program: every two years, the WDFW transplants uncontaminated mussels from aquaculture facilities to …

Dangers of Multi-Drug Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in Children

By the bioMérieux Connection Editors In May of this year, the publication of a new study, titled, “Acinetobacter baumannii Resistance Trends in Children in the United States, 1999–2012,” in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, led to a burst of media coverage that no doubt left many young parents uneasy, to say the …

Multi-Drug Resistant E. coli Rampant in Nursing and Long-Term Care Facilities

By the bioMérieux Connection Editors The May 2017 issue of the American Journal of Infection Control contained an eye-opening paper on the incidence of antibiotic resistant pathogens in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. “Prevalence of multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria among nursing home residents: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” by Sainfer Aliyu et al., selected 12 …

Hospitals with Fewer than 200 Beds More Likely to Have Inconsistent Efforts to Combat Antibiotic Resistance, Study Finds

By Chris Cook, PharmD, Ph.D. A group of researchers from Stanford University believes small hospitals in the U.S. need to focus on antibiotic stewardship, based on a research project that found hospitals with 200 beds or fewer were likely to have inconsistent efforts to reduce antibiotics overuse and misuse. “Antibiotic use and misuse is driving …