PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

'Antibiogram' use in nursing facilities could help improve antibiotic use, effectiveness

'Antibiogram' use in nursing facilities could help improve antibiotic use, effectiveness
2014-11-10
(Press-News.org) PORTLAND, Ore. - Use of "antibiograms" in skilled nursing facilities could improve antibiotic effectiveness and help address problems with antibiotic resistance that are becoming a national crisis, researchers conclude in a new study.

Antibiograms are tools that aid health care practitioners in prescribing antibiotics in local populations, such as a hospital, nursing home or the community. They are based on information from microbiology laboratory tests and provide information on how likely a certain antibiotic is to effectively treat a particular infection.

The recent research, published by researchers from Oregon State University in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, pointed out that 85 percent of antibiotic prescriptions, in the skilled nursing facility residents who were studied, were made "empirically," or without culture data to help determine what drug, if any, would be effective.

Of those prescriptions, 65 percent were found to be inappropriate, in that they were unlikely to effectively treat the target infection.

By contrast, use of antibiograms in one facility improved appropriate prescribing by 40 percent, although due to small sample sizes the improvement was not statistically significant.

"When we're only prescribing an appropriate antibiotic 35 percent of the time, that's clearly a problem," said Jon Furuno, lead author on the study and an associate professor in the Oregon State University/Oregon Health & Science University College of Pharmacy.

"Wider use of antibiograms won't solve this problem, but in combination with other approaches, such as better dose and therapy monitoring, and limiting use of certain drugs, we should be able to be more effective," Furuno said.

"And it's essential we do more to address the issues of antibiotic resistance," he said. "We're not keeping up with this problem. Pretty soon, there won't be anything left in the medical cabinet that works for certain infections."

In September, President Obama called antibiotic resistant infections "a serious threat to public health and the economy," and outlined a new national initiative to address the issue. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has concluded that the problem is associated with an additional 23,000 deaths and 2 million illnesses each year in the U.S., as well as up to $55 billion in direct health care costs and lost productivity.

Antibiograms may literally be pocket-sized documents that outline which antibiotics in a local setting are most likely to be effective. They are often used in hospitals but less so in other health care settings, researchers say. There are opportunities to increase their use in nursing homes but also in large medical clinics and other local health care facilities for outpatient treatment. The recent study was based on analysis of 839 resident and patient records from skilled nursing and acute care facilities.

"Antibiograms help support appropriate and prudent antibiotic use," said Jessina McGregor, also an associate professor in the OSU/OHSU College of Pharmacy, and lead author on another recent publication on evaluating antimicrobial programs.

"Improved antimicrobial prescriptions can help save lives, but they also benefit more than just an individual patient," McGregor said. "The judicious use of antibiotics helps everyone in a community by slowing the spread of drug-resistant genes. It's an issue that each person should be aware of and consider."

Multi-drug resistant organisms, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, and other bacterial attacks that are being called "superinfections" have become a major issue.

Improved antibiotic treatment using a range of tactics, researchers say, could ultimately reduce morbidity, save money and lives, and improve patients' quality of life.

INFORMATION:

The research led by Furuno was supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Collaborators include researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Denver Health and Hospital Authority, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Maryland.

Editor's Note: A digital image of MRSA bacteria is available online: https://flic.kr/p/p2AcuD

President Obama's executive order relating to antibiotic resistance is also available online: http://1.usa.gov/ZrXYwP


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
'Antibiogram' use in nursing facilities could help improve antibiotic use, effectiveness

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

EARTH magazine: Solar storms cause spike in insurance claims

2014-11-10
Alexandria, Va. -- On March 13, 1989, a geomagnetic storm spawned by a solar outburst struck Earth, triggering instabilities in the electric-power grid that serves much of eastern Canada and the U.S. The storm led to blackouts for more than 6 million customers and caused tens of millions of dollars in damages and economic losses. More than 25 years later, the possibility of another such catastrophe still looms, and the day-to-day effects of space weather on electrical systems remain difficult to quantify. Now, a new study correlating electrical insurance claims with geomagnetic ...

Robotic ocean gliders aid study of melting polar ice

Robotic ocean gliders aid study of melting polar ice
2014-11-10
The rapidly melting ice sheets on the coast of West Antarctica are a potential major contributor to rising ocean levels worldwide. Although warm water near the coast is thought to be the main factor causing the ice to melt, the process by which this water ends up near the cold continent is not well understood. Using robotic ocean gliders, Caltech researchers have now found that swirling ocean eddies, similar to atmospheric storms, play an important role in transporting these warm waters to the Antarctic coast--a discovery that will help the scientific community determine ...

Interstitial lung disease is a significant risk factor for lung inflammation

2014-11-10
Interstitial lung disease is a significant risk factor for lung inflammation following stereotactic body radiation therapy for lung cancer. DENVER - Pretreatment interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a significant risk factor for developing symptomatic and severe radiation pneumonitis in stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) alone. ILD is a group of diseases that cause scarring and stiffing of the tissue and space around the air sacs in the lungs, which results in diminished gas exchange. The incidence ...

Noise in a microwave amplifier is limited by quantum particles of heat

Noise in a microwave amplifier is limited by quantum particles of heat
2014-11-10
As part of an international collaboration, scientists at Chalmers University of Technology have demonstrated how noise in a microwave amplifier is limited by self-heating at very low temperatures. The results will be published in the prestigious journal Nature Materials. The findings can be of importance for future discoveries in many areas of science such as quantum computers and radio astronomy. Many significant discoveries in physics and astronomy are dependent upon registering a barely detectable electrical signal in the microwave regime. A famous example of this ...

Production of human motor neurons from stem cells is gaining speed

2014-11-10
This news release is available in French. The motor neurons that innervate muscle fibres are essential for motor activity. Their degeneration in many diseases causes paralysis and often death among patients. Researchers at the Institute for Stem Cell Therapy and Exploration of Monogenic Diseases (I-Stem - Inserm/AFM/UEVE), in collaboration with CNRS and Paris Descartes University, have recently developed a new approach to better control the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells, and thus produce different populations of motor neurons from these cells in only ...

Lighter, cheaper radio wave device could transform telecommunications

Lighter, cheaper radio wave device could transform telecommunications
2014-11-10
AUSTIN, Texas -- Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a milestone in modern wireless and cellular telecommunications, creating a radically smaller, more efficient radio wave circulator that could be used in cellphones and other wireless devices, as reported in the latest issue of Nature Physics. The new circulator has the potential to double the useful bandwidth in wireless communications by enabling full-duplex functionality, meaning devices can transmit and receive signals on the same frequency band at ...

New electron spin secrets revealed

2014-11-10
Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the University of Cambridge in the UK have demonstrated that it is possible to directly generate an electric current in a magnetic material by rotating its magnetization. The findings reveal a novel link between magnetism and electricity, and may have applications in electronics. The electric current generation demonstrated by the researchers is called charge pumping. Charge pumping provides a source of very high frequency alternating electric currents, and its magnitude and external magnetic ...

Catalyst-where-you-want-it method expands the possibilities for new drug development

Catalyst-where-you-want-it method expands the possibilities for new drug development
2014-11-10
LA JOLLA, CA--November 10, 2014--Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry have described a method for creating and modifying organic compounds that overcomes a major limitation of previous methods. The advance opens up a large number of novel chemical structures for synthesis and evaluation, for example, as candidate pharmaceuticals. The new method was designed to avoid an unwanted side effect--a diversion of a catalyst molecule to the wrong location--that prevents chemists from manipulating many organic compounds ...

Iron fertilization less efficient for deep-sea CO2 storage than previously thought?

2014-11-10
The Southern Ocean plays an important role in the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the ocean. One aspect of this is the growth of phytoplankton, which acts as a natural sponge for carbon dioxide, drawing the troublesome greenhouse gas from the atmosphere into the sea. When these plankton die they can sink to the bottom of the ocean and store some of the carbon dioxide they have absorbed, a process scientists call the "biological carbon pump". Although many areas of the Southern Ocean are rich in nutrients, they often lack iron, which limits phytoplankton ...

Some neurons can multitask, raising questions about the importance of specialization

Some neurons can multitask, raising questions about the importance of specialization
2014-11-10
Cold Spring Harbor, NY - Think about all the things you are doing at this moment. As your eyes scan across the lines of this article, maybe your brain is processing the smell of coffee brewing down the hall and the sound of leaf blowers outside your window. Maybe you are tapping your foot and spinning a pen between your fingers. At any given moment, your brain is simultaneously processing a multitude of information from your senses while supporting a dizzying array of behaviors. How is all this information processed at once? The provisional answer, for decades, has centered ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

Targeting FGFR2 may prevent or delay some KRAS-mutated pancreatic cancers

[Press-News.org] 'Antibiogram' use in nursing facilities could help improve antibiotic use, effectiveness