$5M For Researchers To Fight Superbugs, Australia

A new treatment for 'superbugs' could be developed in Australia after a University of Queensland researcher received $5 million in funding to modify an existing antibiotic.

Professor Matthew Cooper, from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), will use the Seeding Drug Discovery Award from the UK's Wellcome Trust to chemically alter the structure of vancomycin.

"Vancomycin and similar antibiotics were traditionally only used as a last-ditch treatment against bacterial infections, when all else had failed," Professor Cooper said.

"But with bacteria becoming resistant to other treatments, these 'drugs of last resort' are now in common use," he said.

"However, many bacteria are now resistant to even these treatments. In fact, they're multi-resistant, with genes that enable them to survive the administration of several different types of antibiotics.

"These bacteria are known as 'superbugs' and they're an increasing problem in communities and hospital wards around the world."

In 2010, infectious diseases killed more people than cancer, according to figures from the World Health Organisation's Global Health Observatory Database.

While deaths are rising, the number of new antibiotics to treat these infections has declined to a quarter of those launched in the 1980s.

"If new treatments aren't developed, there is a real danger that diseases, which are easily treated now, will prove fatal in the future, and the world will regress to a situation akin to the pre-antibiotics era, when more than half of all deaths were from bacterial infection," Professor Cooper said.

Professor Cooper, along with Professor David Paterson from the UQ Centre for Clinical Research and Dr Jason Roberts from the Royal Brisbane Hospital, will modify vancomycin into a new drug that weakens the structures in bacteria that cause resistance.

"Early laboratory tests on the test compounds have been very promising and with this support from the Wellcome Trust we hope to identify lead compounds to take forward into preclinical testing," said Professor Cooper, who performed the original research at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with a UK-based biotechnology company.

In a recent commentary in top scientific journal, Nature, Professor Cooper called for governments to enact legislation to make it more attractive for companies to develop antibiotics, to help overcome the problem of resistance.

"Antibiotic resistance is a global health crisis. It requires global action before one of the most valuable discoveries of the 20th century is lost to the 21st century," he said.

Notes

Professor Cooper joined the IMB in 2009 after receiving a $4 million Australia Fellowship to conduct research into novel antibiotics to combat drug-resistant pathogens. He is an internationally recognised expert in the field of diagnostic device and biosensor development.

Source:
The Wellcome Trust
The Institute for Molecular Bioscience
University of Queensland

Surge In Parents Taking Kids With Common Medical Problems To Emergency Care, UK

The number of children taken to emergency care departments with common medical problems has risen sharply over the past decade, reveals a study published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.

During the past 10 years, the way that the NHS provides care at night and at weekends for common medical problems has changed.

The family doctor is no longer responsible for providing that care and advice to worried parents, with large private companies now generally contracted to provide this instead.

Researchers looked at the medical records of children under the age of 15 who had attended the emergency department at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham between February 2007 and February 2008. These findings were compared with information about attendees a decade earlier.

During the 10 years, the number of patients attending the children's emergency department had remained similar, but the number attending with common medical problems had risen by 42%.

A total of 39,394 children were seen in 2007-8 of whom 14,724 had medical problems. This compared with 38,982 children seen overall in 1997 of whom 10,369 had medical problems .

Ten common medical problems accounted for 85% of the most visits, including breathing difficulty, fever, diarrhoea with or without vomiting, rash and cough.

The proportions of patients attending for each of these conditions were similar in 1997 and 2007-8, except for breathing difficulties.

"Over a 10-year period, attendances to the paediatric emergency department have remained similar; however, there has been a disproportionate rise in the number attending with medical conditions. The presenting problems also remain similar, although there has been a significant reduction in those presenting with difficulty in breathing," write the authors.

"Care pathways focusing on this limited range of high-volume presenting problems will make the maximum impact on improving quality and value of care for children," they add.

Source
Emergency Medicine Journal

Texas RNs Condemn Retaliation Against Brownsville Nurses For Protesting Unsafe ICU Conditions

Texas registered nurses today condemned a Brownsville, Texas hospital for the firings of seven highly skilled critical care nurses for challenging unsafe staffing for the facility's most vulnerable patients in the hospital's intensive care unit (ICU).

The unwarranted terminations, which deprive patients of nurses with more than 70 years of irreplaceable experience, occurred at Valley Regional Medical Center, an affiliate of Hospital Corporation of America, the largest for-profit hospital corporation in the world. The RNs are members of National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas, the state's largest RN union and an affiliate of National Nurses United, the nation's biggest RN union and professional association.

Nurses from Valley Regional and from other Texas HCA-affiliated hospitals will conduct a picket and press conference in front of Valley Regional on Tuesday.

What: Protest picket and press conference
When: Tuesday, May 24, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Where: Valley Regional Medical Center, 100 E. Alton Gloor Blvd., Brownsville

All seven ICU nurses serve as code team nurses and four of the seven are open heart nurses. The staffing shortage in the ICU is now being filled by 13 temporary agency nurses who do not share the lost RNs' history in the facility or with the patients at the hospital.

The nurses were targeted for refusing to accept an additional assignment that in their professional judgment was unsafe and a violation of the Texas Nursing Practice Act.

Hospital management has demanded the nurses, who in the ICU provide constant care for the hospital's most severely ill patients, take on additional duties of temporary charge nurse, who make clinical assignments for patients and staff on the floor, and code team assignments, which can require them to rush to other hospital floors to assist with patients - leaving their own ICU patients and their ICU charge duties behind.

We have been asking the hospital to correct this unsafe situation for some time, with no result," said Ramiro Castillo, RN. "Because of our increasing concern for the safety of our critically ill patients, we felt we no longer had a choice but to refuse the additional duties that put our patients at risk."

"As a registered nurse, my full commitment is to my patients," said Cleo Vasquez, RN. "I have a responsibility under my license to ensure the safety of my patients. I'm disappointed with hospital leadership for not living up to these same standards--standards that they claim to hold."

"Instead of being fired, these nurses should be honored and held up as examples of true patient advocates," said Laura Dominguez, an ICU RN who works elsewhere in Brownsville and is an NNOC-Texas leader.

Additionally, the RNs blasted the cavalier attitude of the hospital's chief nursing officer for gushing in an e-mail that the threatened firings, which would exacerbate the facility staffing crisis, were "groovy."

Source:
National Nurses United