Wherever there are bacteria, very likely there are bacteriophages attacking them. So it makes sense to enlist nature’s predator to fight foodborne pathogens. Why are bacteriophages, then, still slow to the market? Well, because other pre-harvest interventions like lactic acid can do the same job essentially — ensure the cleanliness of the animals and raw materials entering processing facilities — at a much less expensive price. The last 10 to 12 years have certainly seen an increase in companies researching and launching commercial applications of bacteriophages, or phages,… Read More →

The Brazos County Health Department and the Texas Department of State Health Services are investigating five cases of a possibly lethal strain of E. coli found in Brazos County residents. The health department confirms that two children, both of whom are related, are in the hospital. Sources tell us that they are in fair condition at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. Three local adults have also been confirmed to have E. coli. All cases have been confirmed within the last week by the health department, the most recent… Read More →

Dr. François Jacob, a French war hero whose combat wounds forced him to change his career paths from surgeon to scientist, a pursuit that led to a Nobel Prize in 1965 for his role in discovering how genes are regulated, died on April 19 in Paris. He was 92. Dr. Jacob said he had been watching a dull movie with his wife, Lysiane, in 1958 when he began daydreaming and was struck with an idea of how genes might function. “I think I’ve just thought up something important,”… Read More →

More than half of samples of ground turkey, pork chops and ground beef collected from supermarkets for testing by the federal government contained a bacteria resistant to antibiotics, according to a new report highlighting the findings. The data, collected in 2011 by the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System — a joint program of the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — show a sizable increase in the amount of meat contaminated with antibiotic-resistant forms of bacteria, known as superbugs,… Read More →

An alternative treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections that are raising concern nationwide already exists. But there’s a big problem. The treatment is not approved for use in the United States. And it could be a decade or more for the treatment, long used in Russia, former Soviet nations, Eastern Europe and more recently in Asian nations, before it gets regulatory approval for safety and effectiveness. The treatment method involves bacteriophages — viruses that kill bacteria — that are the world’s most abundant organisms. Each phage injects DNA into a… Read More →

Federal officials warned Tuesday that “nightmare bacteria” — including the deadly superbug that struck a National Institutes of Health facility two years ago — are increasingly resistant to even the strongest antibiotics, posing a growing threat to hospitals and nursing homes nationwide. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference: “It’s not often that our scientists come to me and say we have a very serious problem and we need to sound an alarm. But that’s exactly what we are… Read More →