Antibiotics

Kids with pneumonia may be more likely to receive recommended antibiotics when they’re treated at a children’s hospital than when they’re seen elsewhere, a U.S. study suggests. While milder cases of pneumonia may clear up without treatment, antibiotics are recommended for more serious cases that can lead to potentially fatal lung infections. Since 2011, U.S. guidelines have recommended so-called narrow spectrum antibiotics - penicillin, amoxicillin, and ampicillin - for kids hospitalized for pneumonia. For the study,…

BERLIN: Health ministers of the G20 leading economies, meeting for the first time on Saturday, agreed to work together to tackle issues such as a growing resistance to antibiotics and to start implementing national action plans by the end of 2018. Germany, which holds the G20 presidency this year, said it was an "important breakthrough" that all nations had agreed to address the problem and work towards obligatory prescriptions for antibiotics. Saying that globalisation caused infectious diseases to spread more quickly…

PARIS: The UN's health agency urged governments, scientists and pharma companies Monday to create new drugs to tackle 12 antibiotics-resistant supergerms threatening an explosion of incurable disease. For the first time, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a list of bacteria threatening to turn once easily-treatable infections into serial killers. "Antibiotic resistance is growing, and we are fast running out of treatment options," said Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director-general of the WHO, which previously…

MIAMI: A US woman has died from an infection that was resistant to all 26 available antibiotics, health officials said this week, raising new concerns about the rise of dangerous superbugs. The woman, who was in her 70s, died in Nevada in September, and had recently been hospitalized in India with fractured leg bones, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The cause of death was sepsis, following infection from a rare bacteria known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which is…

LOS ANGELES/CHICAGO: KFC, the world's largest chain of fried chicken restaurants, may face pressure from consumer and environmental groups to change how its poultry are raised after McDonald's Corp (MCD.N) said it would switch to chicken raised without human antibiotics.

WASHINGTON: Fast-food giant McDonald's announced Wednesday it would stop serving chicken raised with antibiotics that are important to human health, as worries grow over resistance to crucial drugs.

PARIS: Scientists using a revolutionary approach have devised an antibiotic that may offset the mounting problem of drug resistance for decades, they said on Wednesday.