News by Subject Medicine & Health

A team of researchers from Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University (UVSQ), Inserm and Pasteur Institute (Unité Mixte de Recherche 1181 Biostatistique, biomathématique, pharmacoépidémiologie et maladies infectieuses - B2PHI) has been able to provide for the first time an accurate estimate of both the incidence (annual number of new cases) and added direct cost of infections due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria in patients hospitalised in French hospitals during 2015 and 2016.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is usually effective at suppressing HIV, allowing the immune system to recover by preventing the virus from destroying CD4+ T cells. Scientists have now identified a rare, paradoxical response to ART called extreme immune decline, or EXID. Five individuals evaluated at the NIAID experienced a significant decline in CD4+ T cell levels despite suppression of HIV below detectable levels for more than three years, according to a report published in JCI Insight.

New research suggests that the microbial communities associated with chronic wounds common in diabetic patients affect whether those wounds heal or lead to amputations.

A new study led by a research team from Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School describes how bacteria adapted to the modern hospital environment and repeatedly cause antibiotic-resistant bloodstream infections. This study examined one of the first sustained hospital outbreaks of a multidrug-resistant bacterium, Enterococcus faecalis, which occurred from the early through the mid-1980s, causing over 60 outbreak strains.

A study of samples from 92 patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) has revealed that certain bacteriophages -- viruses that infect bacteria -- worsen the severity of bacterial infections associated with the disorder.