New Robot Cleans Hospital Rooms

As a child my daughter acquired two infections when she had an operation on her leg. A three day stay turned into a month long ordeal. Now days this would be called a HAI, Hospital-Acquired infection. Today this is a major problem. The CDC estimates that  1.7 million people will get HAIs and 99,000 people die each year.

One day while I was sitting in the hospital Hospital with my daughter I moved the chair. Underneath the chair was dust that looked like it had been there a year. Obviously cleanliness was a problem. In Hospitals the cleaning staff is not necessarily given enough time to clean the rooms thoroughly. Research shows that more than half of the surfaces remain untouched.after cleaning.

  There are many micro organism that are HAIs the most dangerous are  Clostridium difficile (C. diff), MRSA, Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) and Acinetobacter baumannii. Some superbugs such as C. diff are showing resistance to disinfectants, making them even harder to eliminate. Others, like CRE, have developed a resistance to antibiotics, making them nearly impossible to treat. CRE is expected to become more dangerous than MRSA.

Xenex Healthcare Services LLC has developed a robot that disinfect hospital rooms by using Ultraviolet light. When the ultraviolet light hits a bacteria and viruses it breaks their  DNA into pieces. Ultraviolet rays do the same in humans causing skin cancer.The Robot takes 5 to 10 minutes to clean a room.It can clean any room in the hospital. It has been shown to be 20 times more effective than chemical cleaning. In one hospital they reduced C. diff infections by 53%.

FDA Sued over Arsenic in Chicken

Last week the FDA was sued  by the Center for Food Safety and eight other government agencies.for  ignoring a 3 year old petition to not allow arsenic in chicken feed. Nitarsone can be added to chicken feed and it contains an inorganic form of arsenic. Because it was inorganic it was originally thought  to be less harmful. It was later found that the arsenic was converted to an organic form inside the chicken.

Arsenic can reduce our ability to fight off some types of influenzas such as N1H1 and Swine Flu This can increase the chances serious disease or death. Long term exposure to Arsenic increases the risk of getting cancers of the bladder, kidney, liver, prostate, skin, lungs .

In some  places they use chicken manure to fertilize for rice. This is thought to be the reason that American rice contains a lot of arsenic.

So what can we do to protect our health. We can buy organic chicken. We can thoroughly rinse rice before cooking. We can cook rice like pasta and throw out the extra water.

My favorite rice is Jasmine Rice. It has one eighth the arsenic and to my taste buds it tastes better.  

 

Please Don't Amputate Your Foot

People from all over the world that are facing amputation go to the Republic of Georgia to get treatment. In Georgia they use Bacteriophage, phage for short, to treat bacterial infection that are resistant to antibiotics. In tests they have proved to be 80 to 90% effective.

Phage are viruses that kill bacteria.The Phage will insert their DNA into a bacteria. Then they will use the bacteria to reproduce themselves over and over again. When the bacteria becomes stuffed with phage it will burst open, killing the bacteria and spilling out 50 or more Phage. These Phage will attack and kill more bacteria.

Each Phage will only attack one type of bacteria. Antibiotics kill several types of bacteria, the good bacteria that help us digest food along with the bad that cause infections.

In treating infections several types of Phage are use together in what is called a cocktail. By using a Cocktail they can still kill the bacteria even if it develops resistance to one of the phage. Phases are designed for an individual because many times there are more than one type of bacteria in an infections. Cocktails can contain as many as 100 phases .

Besides Amputations there are many other conditions that are caused by drug resistant bacteria. In fact over 100,000 people die each year from drug resistant bacteria. These conditions can also be treated by Phage.

In 1921 Felix dHerelle was the first to use Phage Therapy. He treated dysentery. During the early years there were mixed results with Phage Therapy. As the science improved so did the results.By the 1940’s Phage Therapy was used in the US. With the discovery of antibiotics the US stopped using Phage. Germany and the USSR used Phage Therapy during WWII to treat

their soldiers. After the war the USSR continued to use Phage Therapy and did a lot of research on Phage.. Because of the cold war the research findings did not reach the US. Some of the research is still not available because it is not translated into English.

Because of our current laws and regulations Phage can not be used for medicine in the United States. Phage Therapy can not be patented because it is a living organism. Drug companies will not spend money on Phage because without exclusive rights they can’t make a profit.

Current drug laws would require the Phage Cocktails to go through the approval processes even if all the individual  Phages have been approved. In different parts of the country

there can be different bacteria prevalent. This would cause a need to get a tremendous number of cocktails to get approved. It costs eight hundred million to get an antibiotic to market. To get all of the cocktails approved would probably cost close to the national debt.

Phage Therapy has been safely used for 90 years.  The FDA needs a different standard for testing Bacteriophage than for medicines that have been formulated by man. A drug without a record of safety.

To bring Phage Therapy to market in the US we need to develop more public awareness. We need to bring pressure to bear on the Congress and the FDA to change regulations. As long as it costs as much as it does under the present regulations nothing will ever get done and people will continue to die .

If you would like to help bring about change so that we can use Phage Therapy please leave me a note on the blog and I will get back to you.

To find out more about peoples personal experiences with Phage therapy check out this link http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-03/next-phage

Shame on Consumer Reports

               Shame on Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports had an article on bacterial contamination in ground turkey products. Some of the things they stated were misleading.

In the report they tested for bacteria that was resistant to antibiotics. Specifically, they tested four antibiotics: ciprofloxacin, penicillin, cephalosporin, and tetracycline. Ciprofloxacin resistance was a bad choice to study in that ciprofloxacin has not been used in turkeys for the last 8 years. They tested for drug resistance to penicillin and cephalosporin which are also not used very much in turkeys. After being over-used for seventy years, you could find bacteria resistant to penicillin in bacteria whether they are in turkey or elsewhere.

Even though they may have made bad decisions on what to test for, they did point out one positive thing turkey farmers have accomplished. There was no Campylobacter bacteria on the turkeys that were tested.

Campylobacter causes more illness than any other bacteria that is on our food. It is a major accomplishment of the turkey producers to rid Campylobacter from the turkeys. They have also reduced the amount of Salmonella on the turkeys.

The odds are that they could get the same results testing any other type of ground meat. Consumers should take precautions when handling meat. Turkey and others meats should be cooked to the proper temperature to kill all bacteria. For turkey, that is 165 degrees. Turkey and other meats should not be washed. Washing will cause water to splatter and spread bacteria around your kitchen. You also need to wash your hands after handling any meat.

Even though I feel that Consumer Reports did a bad job in deciding which drugs to test for resistant bacteria, I think the turkey producers are making one big mistake. They are using antibiotics in the turkey feed instead of just giving antibiotics to sick birds. This causes bacterial resistance.

Eighty percent of the antibiotics used each year in America are used in animal feed. Farmers are quick to point out that sixty-seven percent are types of antibiotics that are not used in humans. Using this sixty-seven percent in their animal feed  just means that there will be no antibiotics for people as well animals. On March 8 of last year, the World Health Organization said that antibiotics would be useless in the future. We already have some bacteria that is totally drug-resistant.

It is time we started using other treatments for bacterial infections. The good news is that Australia has started to use Bacteriophage to treat bacterial diseases. That is the fourth country where Bacteriophage is legal.  

Why People Catch MRSA in the Hospital

Why People Catch MRSA in the Hospital

MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a potentially deadly infectious bacteria, lives in many of our noses and we don’t even know it. As long as we have a healthy immune systems, they can live in our noses and on our skin undetected for years. Because of drug resistance MRSA is very hard to treat. Thirty seven thousand people died in the United States last year in the United States  from MRSA.

When someone gets a cut or skin abrasion, MRSA. This can start out as small red bumps and progress into what looks like a spider bite, possibly accompanied by fever or rash. But it quickly it becomes a pus-filled boil that needs to be surgically cleaned out. In a healthy individual that is sometimes all the treatment necessary. MRSA can also spread from the nose down into the respiratory tract and people can get a MRSA urinary tract infection.

No one knows why some people are more resistant to MRSA infections than others. MRSA is not an especially virulent form of Staphylococcus, but it is very difficult to treat because it is resistant to antibiotics. Once it gets into the tissue, it can spread to organs and cause  necrotizing (flesh-eating) and pneumonia.  It can also cause toxic shock syndrome because the bacteria carries a poison.

In some hospitals in the United States, they have started swabbing the noses of employees and visitors to identify MRSA carriers. Thirty percent or more of these people have MRSA in their nose. Eighty-three percent of the people who get a MRSA Infection get the same strain of MRSA that is in their nose. So it is to their advantage to get it treated as well as benefiting the hospital’s patients. Checking patients for MRSA before operations and using bacteriophage nasal spray could reduce the number of MRSA infections.

Privacy curtains in hospital rooms can also be contaminated with MRSA. Some hospitals have started washing the privacy curtains between patients. Another major cause of MRSA infection is people not washing their hands.

However, swabbing of noses, washing privacy curtains, and other MRSA-prevention practices are voluntary policies set by the hospitals themselves, and not employed by all hospitals. I feel that hospitals should be required to report how many people caught MRSA in their hospital, as well as implement and notify consumers of their MRSA-prevention practices. At the very least people should ask about the sanitary policies at a hospital before going for an operation.

Mad Cow Disease in Brazil

Mad Cow Disease

Brazil Has hidden the fact that a cow tested positive for mad cow disease two years ago. The have continued to ship beef all over the world including the United States. They claim that because the cow died from another cause,. it was safe even though tests showed signs of mad cow disease. Mad Cow disease is deadly to humans.

This brings into question the wisdom of the USDA reducing their inspections of foreign producers by 80%. They are depending on foreign countries to inspect their self. This is the second problem we have had with beef this year. The first was with Canadian beef.which was infected with E Coli.

Sense there is no way for consumers to tell where their beef comes from it might be a good time to stop eating beef.

USDA Cutting Back on Inspections

The USDA no longer inspects foreign meat processing plants every year. Check out this article for more details
the usda-quietly-eliminated-60-percent-of-foreign-meat-inspections