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The quest to make a hospital an infection-free environment seems never-ending. That’s especially the case as new antibiotic-resistant bugs crop up and as staph and sepsis continue to risk patient lives. The responsibility for addressing these problems does not rest solely on infection preventionists, of course, but there are measures these healthcare professionals can and should implement to better ensure a highly functioning safety of culture.

Scientists have built a large body of knowledge about Lyme disease over the past 40 years, yet controversies remain and the number of cases continues to rise. In the United States, reported cases of Lyme disease, which is transmitted from wild animals to humans by tick bites, have tripled in the past 20 years. A multitude of interacting factors are driving the increase in Lyme disease cases, but their relative importance remains unclear, according to Marm Kilpatrick, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. Nevertheless, he noted that there are a number of promising strategies for controlling the disease that have not been widely implemented. Kilpatrick is lead author of a paper published April 24 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B that examines the complex array of factors influencing the prevalence of Lyme disease and identifies the major gaps in understanding that must be filled to control this important disease.

When the standard malaria medications failed to help 18 critically ill patients, the attending physician in a Congo clinic acted under the "compassionate use" doctrine and prescribed a not-yet-approved malaria therapy made only from the dried leaves of the Artemisia annua plant. In just five days, all 18 people fully recovered. This small but stunningly successful trial offers hope to address the growing problem of drug-resistant malaria.

A study from Indiana University has found evidence that extremely small changes in how atoms move in bacterial proteins can play a big role in how these microorganisms function and evolve. The research, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a major departure from prevailing views about the evolution of new functions in organisms, which regarded a protein's shape, or "structure," as the most important factor in controlling its activity.

Hundreds of thousands of babies worldwide die every year from infections that ravage their digestive systems – including those caused by Salmonella and E. coli bacteria. Millions more get sick. Could the difference in survival come not from their immature immune systems, but rather from the mix of bacteria that grow in their tiny guts? New research in mice offers evidence that some of those bacteria – called Clostridia -- provide key protection against infection, in addition to helping digest food. But it also shows that the youngest newborn mice don’t have Clostridia yet, making them the most vulnerable to invading bacteria similar to the pathogens that sicken so many human babies.