British scientists have developed a new anti-bacterial drug, currently code-named XF-73, which could kill deadly superbugs in five minutes. The short period that the drug acts on the bugs is very crucial because it prevents the bacteria from developing resistance.
Destiny Pharma, the Sussex pharmaceutical company which introduced XF-73, reveals that the drug can be used to prevent the spread of the deadly bacterial MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus).
For the second time in the past two months, the death of a Hongkong patient has been linked to ‘necrotizing fasciitis’ or the bacteria which causes the flesh eating disease.
The BBC investigates the presence of germs in one British home. In particular they focused on whether it has MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus), salmonella, E-coli, and flu viruses which a scammy cleansing product claims it can all kill. The finding: they found none of these bugs in the kitchen and other parts of the house but they did find the deadly MRSA on the computer mouse.
Most of the flesh-eating bacteria lawsuits are based on allegations that doctors or hospital staff failed to immediately diagnose the disease. Of course, if you’ve been reading this site, you would already know that – to be fair to doctors and other medical staff – the flesh eating disease is kind of hard to diagnose. What makes it so fatal is that if the disease is not diagnosed and treated ASAP, death from the infection can occur very fast within hours.
Anyhoo, here’s a story of a sports journalist named Joe McDonnell who was able to beat the disease because of the timely diagnosis by his doctor. The Press Telegram reports: Read more »
How common is the flesh-eating disease? It’s actually very rare (only about 9,000-11,500 cases in the U.S. are reported each year according to the Center for Disease Control) but the disease appears to be becoming more common than in the past.
Dr. Alan Bisno, a retired University of Miami expert who has lectured other doctors on this, told the Associated Press: “In the first 20 years I practiced, I may have seen one case. Within a very few years, everybody in the audience had all seen cases.”
A mutant gene may be the key that would help us humans combat the rare but deadly flesh eating virus.
Here’s the press release (from back in December 2009) about a research study by The Methodist Research Institute in Houston which found that a gene mutation lessens the deadly effect of the flesh eating bacteria.
