November 19th, 2015
Podcast 190: Last line of antibiotic defense breached
The Lancet Infectious Diseases has just published a worrying account from China about a dangerous antibiotic resistance factor carried on plasmids. The factor, called MCR-1, confers resistance to colistin — a last line of defense against multi-resistant Gram-negative bacilli. The co-author of a helpful commentary in that journal, Dr. David L. Paterson of the University of […]
December 9th, 2011
Podcast 138: Why do kids in the U.S. get so many inappropriate broad-spectrum antibiotics?
When kids go for ambulatory care, they get an antibiotic prescribed about 20% of the time. Half of those antibiotics are of the broad-spectrum variety. What are the factors leading up to this, and what are some resources to turn to for better information on this dangerous situation? Listen in to this 27-minute podcast with the first […]
January 13th, 2011
Podcast 112: MRSA guidelines from IDSA
The Infectious Diseases Society of American last week issued clinical practice guidelines on dealing with methicillin-resistant S. aureus infection. We interview the principal author of those guidelines, Dr. Catherine Liu of the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Liu responds to the criticism leveled earlier this week against all IDSA guidelines, for their apparent lack of […]