Sunday, November 04, 2012
How Investigating Bacteria Will Change Health Care In Hospitals
How Investigating Bacteria Will Change Health Care In Hospitals
Jennifer Welsh | Nov. 1, 2012
Business Insider: You've worked on multiple microbiome projects – Earth and Home — could you explain to me what microbiome is?
Business Insider
Jennifer Welsh | Nov. 1, 2012
We often think of the world around us as sterile and static, especially when we are in a hospital. In reality, every surface on earth is literally teeming with millions of bacteria.
Jack Gilbert, a microbiologist from the University of Chicago, has spent his career investigating these invisible companions all around us. This year, Gilbert and a group of microbiologists will take over a brand new hospital in an experiment called the "Hospital Microbiome."
The goal of "Hospital Microbiome" is to try to see what microbes and viruses will move in to the hospital and how patients and hospital staff impact the variety of microbes that live in the hospital. Gilbert and his team will track the bacteria in the hospital before it opens and as it starts accepting staff and patients.
This data will help hospital administration, doctors, nurses, and researchers get a better understanding of how these bacteria and viruses make their way around a hospital, sometimes causing dangerous infections in the patients.
We asked Gilbert to explain the project and what they are hoping to find out from this hospital, below is an edited and condensed version of our conversation.
Business Insider: You've worked on multiple microbiome projects – Earth and Home — could you explain to me what microbiome is?
Jack Gilbert: A microbiome is the bacteria and other single celled organisms that live on and in whatever it is I'm studying. The home microbiome is the surfaces of your home, the kitchen counters, the doorknobs, and light fixtures and you, your hands, your feet and your nasal passages.
In the earth it's exactly what it sounds like, it's the entire planet. We have very ambitious goals of characterizing all microbial life on the planet.
BI: What kinds of microbes are you looking for in these projects?
JG: Um, all of them.
Essentially we want to uncover and identify the different types of bacteria that are present and associated with these kinds of environments.
In the home and the hospital it's obviously important to understand the pathogens, the bacteria that cause you to get sick. Where they come from, who brings them into those environments, how they develop and persist, and what that means.
It's shocking how little we actually understand about that after a century of work in microbiology. We have very little understanding of how these things move between surfaces and people.
BI: We think of the things around us as static, but these microbe communities change and evolve over time.
JG: Yeah, for example in the hospital microbiome project we have the unique opportunity to start exploring in detail the bacteria that live on the surfaces of the hospital, before all the patients move in.
We will be sampling the door handles, the floor, the toilets, showers and water in the incubators and the operating room.
When the patients and the staff move in there's a possibility they will bring with them less friendly bugs. They build up in the hospital environment and we don't know how they do that.
This causes people to get sick and even die in hospitals all over the United States and all over the world on a daily basis. These so-called healthcare acquired infections are very prevalent problem and we have very little understanding of how they get into the hospital, how they spread, what are the mechanisms of their development.
Article continued and concluded:
Business Insider
Labels: bacteria, Health Care, Hospitals, microbes, microbiologists, microbiome, viruses
# posted by Pat O'Connor @ 7:15 AM
Bacteria Test Could Prevent Deadly Infections In Newborns
Bacteria Test Could Prevent Deadly Infections In Newborns
Nov 2012
Researchers have developed a small cartridge that can identify harmful microbes in a newborn or the mother. It is extremely easy to use and does not require much clinical microbiological expertise.
The health worker simply adds a sample from the baby, mother, or both, and waits ten to fifteen minutes for the result. This simple, cheap and rapid test gives health care professionals useful data so that they can decide quickly what treatments to recommend.
When a baby is born, they move from the protection of the womb to an environment with literally trillions of microscopic organisms.
Douglas Weibel, biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said:
The health worker simply adds a sample from the baby, mother, or both, and waits ten to fifteen minutes for the result. This simple, cheap and rapid test gives health care professionals useful data so that they can decide quickly what treatments to recommend.
When a baby is born, they move from the protection of the womb to an environment with literally trillions of microscopic organisms.
Douglas Weibel, biochemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said:
"While that microbial environment in the gut is still developing, the introduction of one of many of the wrong kinds of bacteria may cause a severe immune response. In an infant, the immune system could just ravage the intestines."
In remote parts of Africa, the risk of the infant's immune system ravaging the intestines is even greater. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded Wiebel and team a Grand Challenges Explorations grant to get a simple bacterial test out on the field; one that could detect necrotizing enterocolitis - a common and often fatal infection in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya.
Weibel said "We get many of the beneficial microbes that take up residence in our bodies from our mothers at birth. But if there are pathogens that are transmitted from mother to baby as well, they can be identified and treated."
Treating those pathogens often means administering an antibiotic after the infant has developed vague symptoms. As the mother nears labor, she may be given antibiotics as a preventive measure - the problem is that the antibiotic itself causes the very problem it was designed to prevent.
Weibel said: "An approach like that can indiscriminately destroy almost all of the bacteria in a baby's intestines - including the helpful types -leaving harmful bacteria the space and resources to flourish. And you're back where you don't want to be, working against a high mortality rate."
Weibel said "We get many of the beneficial microbes that take up residence in our bodies from our mothers at birth. But if there are pathogens that are transmitted from mother to baby as well, they can be identified and treated."
Treating those pathogens often means administering an antibiotic after the infant has developed vague symptoms. As the mother nears labor, she may be given antibiotics as a preventive measure - the problem is that the antibiotic itself causes the very problem it was designed to prevent.
Weibel said: "An approach like that can indiscriminately destroy almost all of the bacteria in a baby's intestines - including the helpful types -leaving harmful bacteria the space and resources to flourish. And you're back where you don't want to be, working against a high mortality rate."
By knowing whether harmful bacteria are present before or after birth, antibiotic usage can be narrowed down to just those who really need it. However, verifying who the needy ones are has meant, until now, using complex and expensive genome sequencing equipment that only exists in well funded laboratories.
Wiebel's group configured the cartridge system and managed to keep the cost per unit below one dollar.
Wiebel said "Nate Cira, a really smart undergrad who worked in our lab, developed a small cartridge that we have adapted to carry almost everything needed to identify harmful microbes. It is extraordinarily simple. It doesn't require someone that has a lot of clinical microbiology expertise."
The team plans to adapt the technology so that it can be used with smartphones and the results may be processed and shared through a wireless connection. The analysis data could be shared with health care providers nearby and centers that monitor disease globally. Weibel said "The doctor gets information on the specific organism that could cause very serious health problems for a baby, and disease centers can use it for epidemiological research."
The Grand Challenges Explorations has funded over 80 projects, at $100,000 each for one year's research. They all have to option of then submitting their work for further funding, which may be up to $1 million.
Chris Wilson, director of the Global Health Discovery and Translational Sciences program at the Gates Foundation, said "Investments in innovative global health research are already paying off. We continue to be impressed by the novelty and innovative spirit of Grand Challenges Explorations projects and are enthusiastic about this exciting research. These investments hold real potential to yield new solutions to improve the health of millions of people in the developing world, and ensure that everyone has the chance to live a healthy, productive life."
Weibel will visit Uganda with James Ntambi, a fellow biochemistry professor, as well as a group of UW-Madison students. They will set up a lab where they can test the cartridges.
Wiebel's group configured the cartridge system and managed to keep the cost per unit below one dollar.
Wiebel said "Nate Cira, a really smart undergrad who worked in our lab, developed a small cartridge that we have adapted to carry almost everything needed to identify harmful microbes. It is extraordinarily simple. It doesn't require someone that has a lot of clinical microbiology expertise."
The team plans to adapt the technology so that it can be used with smartphones and the results may be processed and shared through a wireless connection. The analysis data could be shared with health care providers nearby and centers that monitor disease globally. Weibel said "The doctor gets information on the specific organism that could cause very serious health problems for a baby, and disease centers can use it for epidemiological research."
The Grand Challenges Explorations has funded over 80 projects, at $100,000 each for one year's research. They all have to option of then submitting their work for further funding, which may be up to $1 million.
Chris Wilson, director of the Global Health Discovery and Translational Sciences program at the Gates Foundation, said "Investments in innovative global health research are already paying off. We continue to be impressed by the novelty and innovative spirit of Grand Challenges Explorations projects and are enthusiastic about this exciting research. These investments hold real potential to yield new solutions to improve the health of millions of people in the developing world, and ensure that everyone has the chance to live a healthy, productive life."
Weibel will visit Uganda with James Ntambi, a fellow biochemistry professor, as well as a group of UW-Madison students. They will set up a lab where they can test the cartridges.
Medical News Today
Labels: bacteria test, clinical microbiology, deadly infection, immune system, microbes, necrotizing enterocolitis, newborn
# posted by Pat O'Connor @ 7:02 AM
Saturday, September 01, 2012
Real-life 'Contagion' uses DNA to halt outbreak
Real-life 'Contagion' uses DNA to halt outbreak
August 2012
By Sharon Begley - Reuters
NEW YORK — If Hollywood needs a plot for a medical thriller, scientists at the National Institutes of Health have one: Doctors, using cutting-edge technology called whole-genome sequencing, trace an outbreak of a deadly bacterial infection, identify precisely how it's spreading - and in the final minutes sic poison-spewing robots on the rampaging microbes.
That's essentially what scientists did when Klebsiella pneumoniae, an often-lethal bacterium, spread through NIH's research hospital in Bethesda, Maryland last year, as described in a study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
"With whole-genome sequencing," said microbial geneticist Julie Segre of NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute, who led the study, "we were able to understand how the outbreak was moving through the hospital and identify weaknesses" in infection-control practices, finally halting the outbreak.
The unprecedented effort to use genome sequencing to save patients from an infectious outbreak offers hope that the technique could fight other hospital-acquired infections. These infections kill some 99,000 people die from such infections in the United States every year, estimates the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The added health-care costs, according to the CDC: $4.5 billion a year.
Calling it a "compelling story," virologist and microbe hunter Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York City said the NIH scientists' feat shows what ultra-fast whole-genome sequencing can accomplish in so-called microbial forensics. In whole-genome sequencing, machines identify the DNA units that make up an organism's entire genome.
Researchers were able "to implicate 'Patient Zero,' track transmission of a drug-resistant bacterium over the course of an important outbreak and provide insights that will inform infection control and patient care," said Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health and a scientific adviser on the 2011 film "Contagion."
The outbreak at NIH's hospital began last summer. In June a 43-year-old patient with antibiotic-resistant K. pneumoniae, which infects the urinary tract and bloodstream and can cause sepsis, a blood infection, was transferred to its intensive-care unit from a New York City hospital. "Patient Zero" was put in an isolation room; staff and visitors had to wear gowns, masks and gloves to enter.
Labels: bacterial infection, bloodstream, DNA, genome sequencing, hospital-acquired infections, K. pneumonia, microbes, sepsis, urinary tract
# posted by Pat O'Connor @ 10:40 AM
