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The topic of antimicrobial stewardship is gaining momentum, both in and outside the healthcare field. Experts are looking at antimicrobial stewardship programs in hospitals and other care facilities as the next step in combatting the development of multidrug-resistant infections.

Noroviruses are pernicious intestinal viruses. They cause violent vomiting and diarrhea, and people ill with the virus remain contagious up to three days after they seem to recover. Although a vaccine for these viruses is in clinical trials, there is still no medication to combat them. That’s in part because researchers have not been able to culture human noroviruses so they can test potential treatments - until now, according to a study by University of Florida Health researchers published Friday, Nov. 7 in the journal Science.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has ordered $2.7 million in personal protective equipment (PPE) to increase Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) supplies to assist U.S. hospitals caring for Ebola patients. Products are being configured into 50 kits that can be rapidly delivered to hospitals. Each kit can provide the PPE needed by clinical teams to manage the care of one Ebola patient for up to five days.

Microbiologists and molecular biologists at ETH Zurich and the University of Bonn have discovered a new agent in fungi that kills bacteria. The substance, known as copsin, has the same effect as traditional antibiotics, but belongs to a different class of biochemical substances. Copsin is a protein, whereas traditional antibiotics are often non-protein organic compounds.

The current Ebola outbreak shows how quickly diseases can spread with global jet travel. Yet knowing how to predict the spread of these epidemics is still uncertain, because the complicated models used are not fully understood, says a UC Berkeley biophysicist.