Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government and the richest
charity are offering bounties to a new wave of scientists to
wipe out HIV, the virus that causes AIDS and is one of the
world’s biggest killers.
Frustrated by one failure after another, the U.S. is asking
scientists to outline a major program to find a cure for HIV,
while the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle is offering
grants of $100,000 for researchers working on ways to drive Read the rest of this entry »

NEW YORK, NY –
Hospital acquired infections (HAI) are
exacting a significant toll on human life, ranking among the top ten
leading causes of death in the United States. With an estimated 5%-10%
hospital patients acquiring an infection, about two million cases each year
and about 90,000 deaths, there is a huge associated financial burden which
a new report from Kalorama Information, “Nosocomial Infections: Market
Assessment for Diagnostics and Therapeutics,” Read the rest of this entry »

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) — Bloodstream infections from a drug-
resistant type of bacteria plummeted in hospital intensive care
units over a decade, according to government researchers who
attributed the change to a focus on cleanliness.
From 1997 through 2007, the rate of infections in ICU
patients’ blood spread by catheters carrying the bacteria called
, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, dropped
almost 50 percent, the study found. Read the rest of this entry »

Hospital infections such as C. difficile are to be the target of a £1.2m clinical trial.
Researchers in Swansea and County Durham will tackle the downside of antibiotics given to elderly patients, which can lead to diarrhoea.
The three-year study will examine whether supplements of healthy bacteria – probiotics – can help.
Around 3,000 patients will take part in the trial at five hospitals during the next three years.
Some will be given Read the rest of this entry »

CASES of the hospital bug Clostridium difficile among the over 65s at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital increased this summer – despite a significant fall in infections nationwide.
Latest figures released by the Health Protection Agency show there were 8,683 cases recorded in patients aged 65 years and over between April and June 2008 in England – an 18% drop on the previous
quarter.
Compared with the same period last year the number of Read the rest of this entry »

I’D like to challenge some of the “conventional wisdom” offered by Drs. Jeffrey Duchin and Neil Barg, based on my experiences as a participant in a pilot project to help hospitals reduce hospital-acquired infections of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (“MRSA not hospitals’ only infection challenge,” guest columnists, Jan. 6). Over a period of about two years, hospitals reduced their rates of MRSA transmission by 73 percent in the participating Read the rest of this entry »

The number of patients who contracted infections while receiving treatment at hospitals in Pennsylvania fell nearly 8 percent to 27,949 cases in 2007 from 30,237 the previous year, according to a state report due out today.
The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council’s examination of so-called hospital-acquired infections found 177 infections per 10,000 hospitalized patients statewide. The rates at hospitals varied widely for a variety Read the rest of this entry »

Hospitals are making some dramatic gains in their fight against infections, even those caused by a deadly, antibiotic-resistant superbug.
finds that in the past decade, the rate of bloodstream infections has been nearly cut in half nationwide among certain highly vulnerable patients in hospital intensive care units.
And just as heartening, among these patients, bloodstream infections with the methicillin-resistant
, commonly known as MRSA, also Read the rest of this entry »

Pennsylvania politicians and health-care professionals have great hopes that a computer tool can fight infections in hospitals and save the health-care system money.
The state government passed a law in 2007 that requires most hospitals to use electronic monitoring software that examines any hospital reports entered into databases. The program allows infection-control experts to quickly determine the source of an infection and how many patients Read the rest of this entry »

Infections contracted by patients in Pennsylvania hospitals dropped nearly 8 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to a report released Thursday by the
.
The PHC4 study found 27,949 patients — or 17.7 per 1,000 admissions — contracted an infection during their hospital stay in 2007, down from 30,237 patients (19.2 per 1,000 admissions) in 2006.
Figures for 2008 are not yet available.
“The decline in the infection rate from Read the rest of this entry »