bpod-mrc:

Boning Up

To construct a building from scratch, you might first build a basic shell or scaffold, then replace that with the permanent structure. Building new bone is similar. An intermediate cartilage structure is established first, only to be converted to solid bone subsequently. This process is supported by a dense network of blood vessels, but exactly how they help is unclear. A new study has found that a particular type of these vessels, known as type H (yellow in the bone section pictured, with vessels stained green and red), help replace the cartilage when it’s time. Specifically, the vessels steer bone growth direction, and endothelial cells lining them lead the cartilage breakdown. Excessive cartilage damage is a hallmark of arthritis, and improving bone repair would benefit countless injured patients, so the next step is asking whether we can control and harness this important function of blood vessels.

Written by Anthony Lewis

• Image from work by Sara G. Romeo and colleagues
• MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, London, UK
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Nature Cell Biology, April 2019

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biomedgirl:

Looking at tissue sections to see their normal histology in my new pathology module. Next week we’re looking at cancerous tissues to see the difference. 🔬🦠

Antimicrobial Resistance

biomedicool:

(including antibiotic resistance) 

“this serious threat is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country.“  (x)

Antimicrobial resistance is the ability of a microbe (eg bacteria) to resist the effects of medication that could previously successfully treat it. These then require alternative medications or higher doses of antimicrobials, which can be more expensive, more toxic, and less effective. 

• can be multidrug resistant (MDR).
• Extensively drug resistant (XDR)/totally drug resistant (TDR)=“superbugs”
  

This makes the disease caused by the microbes ‘incurable’ as there are no drugs that can treat it.

All classes of microbe can become resistant through:

• natural resistance 
• genetic mutation
• one species acquiring resistance from another

Preventive measures

• Only using antibiotics when needed
• Narrow-spectrum antibiotics -only target specific organism, avoiding creating resistnance in other types that happened to be present
• Proper sanitation
  

Notable examples

• Resistance to the treatment of last resort for life-threatening infections caused by a common intestinal bacteria, Klebsiella pneumoniae–carbapenem antibiotics–has spread to all regions of the world. K. pneumoniae is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections such as pneumonia, bloodstream infections, infections in newborns and intensive-care unit patients. In some countries, because of resistance, carbapenem antibiotics would not work in more than half of people treated for K. pneumoniae infections.
• Resistance to one of the most widely used antibacterial medicines for the treatment of urinary tract infections caused by E. coli–fluoroquinolones–is very widespread. 
• Treatment failure to the last resort of treatment for gonorrhoea–third generation cephalosporins–has been confirmed in Austria, Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom. An estimated 106 million people are infected with gonorrhoea every year.

Antibiotic resistance causes people to be sick for longer and increases the risk of death. For example, people with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) are estimated to be 64% more likely to die than people with a non-resistant form of the infection. 

This often occurs in people who prematurely stop taking their prescribed antibiotics. For example, if they’re prescribed a 10 day dose and feel better at day 9, they’ll not take the last one or two doses, which can let the bacteria live and the sickness lengthen!

Friendly reminder to always take medication as directed :)