Recent News

By Region: Europe

The chilling implications of an ancient virus dug up in Siberia

(Mail Online) At first, oil worker David Smith thought he had something like the flu. He wasn’t that surprised, as he normally caught some sort of bug after the flight from Moscow. He spent the first day back home in Manchester in bed, head and muscles aching. He felt wretched, although he had enough strength  Read More »

Giant virus on ice for 30,000 years could signal danger

(Whitsunday Times) THE discovery of an infectious giant virus that had been entombed in Siberian permafrost for 30,000 years has led scientists to warn of other disease-causing viruses and microbes that may escape from the frozen earth once it has melted. Scientists in France and Russia discovered the virus in samples of frozen earth taken  Read More »

Vinegar Kills Tuberculosis and Other Mycobacteria

(Global Biodefense) The active ingredient in vinegar, acetic acid, can effectively kill mycobacteria, even highly drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis, an international team of researchers from Venezuela, France, and the US reports in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Acetic acid might be used as an inexpensive and non-toxic disinfectant against drug-resistant  Read More »

European Gram-Negative Antibacterial Engine

(Global Biodefense) Over 30 European universities, research institutes, and companies, led by GlaxoSmithKline and Uppsala University, are joining forces in a 6-year programme supported by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) to develop novel antibiotics against Gram-negative pathogens in a project called ENABLE. Despite the growing epidemic of antibiotic resistance, only two new classes of antibiotics  Read More »

Chemist gets US patent for solution to resistance problem

(University of Copenhagen) A chemist based at the University of Copenhagen has just taken out a patent for a drug that can make previously multidrug-resistant bacteria responsive to antibiotics once again. Jørn Bolstad and his chemist colleagues hope that the substance will soon be able to tackle the tremendous problems associated with multidrug resistant tuberculosis  Read More »