Tag Archives: telephone interview

U.S. pre-term babies die despite medical care: study

in.reuters.com

U.S. pre-term babies die despite medical care: study

Very early pre-term babies kept alive with ventilators, chest tubes and drugs to support the heart may live a little longer than they did 10 years ago, but are just as likely to die before ever going home, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Their study suggests the emotionally taxing and expensive care given these tiny newborns, delivered at 22 to 24 weeks gestation, does not in the end save their lives. Babies born at 22 weeks included in the study all died as infants, regardless of care.

“This is a very difficult ethical dilemma for everyone involved,” Pamela Donohue of Johns Hopkins Childrens Center in Baltimore, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Most pregnancies last about 40 weeks, and babies born earlier than 37 weeks of pregnancy are considered premature.

Donohue’s team studied 160 women who gave birth at 22-24 weeks during separate two-year periods — 1993-1995 and 2001-2003.

Those who gave birth during the current decade were more likely to receive higher-level care around the time of delivery, including sonograms, antibiotics and steroids to help with fetal lung development.

After birth, their children were more likely to be put on ventilators, drugs to boost heart and blood pressure rates and to have chest tubes inserted.

Infants born in 2001-2003 lived longer on average — seven days, compared to two days in the 1990s.

But mortality rates did not fall, and the researchers urged greater discussion and further study both on intervention and the degree of suffering imposed on children, their families and healthcare providers.

Very early pre-term babies kept alive with ventilators, chest tubes and drugs to support the heart may live a little longer than they did 10 years ago, but are just as likely to die before ever going home, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Their study suggests the emotionally taxing and expensive care given these tiny newborns, delivered at 22 to 24 weeks gestation, does not in the end save their lives. Babies born at 22 weeks included in the study all died as infants, regardless of care.

“This is a very difficult ethical dilemma for everyone involved,” Pamela Donohue of Johns Hopkins Childrens Center in Baltimore, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Most pregnancies last about 40 weeks, and babies born earlier than 37 weeks of pregnancy are considered premature.

Donohue’s team studied 160 women who gave birth at 22-24 weeks during separate two-year periods — 1993-1995 and 2001-2003.

Those who gave birth during the current decade were more likely to receive higher-level care around the time of delivery, including sonograms, antibiotics and steroids to help with fetal lung development.

After birth, their children were more likely to be put on ventilators, drugs to boost heart and blood pressure rates and to have chest tubes inserted.

Infants born in 2001-2003 lived longer on average — seven days, compared to two days in the 1990s.

But mortality rates did not fall, and the researchers urged greater discussion and further study both on intervention and the degree of suffering imposed on children, their families and healthcare providers.

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Study exposes how bacteria resist antibiotics

in.reuters.com

Study exposes how bacteria resist antibiotics

Scientists have discovered how bacteria fend off a wide range of antibiotics, and blocking that defense mechanism could give existing antibiotics more power to fight dangerous infections.

Researchers at New York University said on Thursday that bacteria produce certain nitric oxide-producing enzymes to resist antibiotics.

Drugs that inhibit these enzymes can make antibiotics much more potent, making even deadly superbugs like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA succumb, they said.

“Developing new medications to fight antibiotic resistant bacteria like MRSA is a huge hurdle, associated with great cost and countless safety issues,” said Evgeny Nudler of NYU Langone Medical Center, whose study appears in the journal Science.

“Here, we have a short cut, where we don’t have to invent new antibiotics. Instead, we can enhance the activity of well-established ones, making them more effective at lower doses,” he said in a statement.

Drug-resistant bacteria such as MRSA are a growing problem in hospitals worldwide, killing about 19,000 people a year in the United States.

Nudler’s team found that many antibiotics kill bacteria through the production of harmful charged particles known as reactive oxygen species, otherwise called oxidative stress.

“Antibiotics cause bacteria to produce a lot of reactive oxygen species. Those damage DNA, and bacteria cannot survive. They eventually die,” Nudler said in a telephone interview.

We found nitric oxide can protect bacteria against oxidative stress.”

He said bacteria produce nitric oxide to resist antibiotics. The defense mechanism appears to apply broadly to many different types of antibiotics, he said.

Nudler said many companies are testing various nitric oxide-lowering compounds called nitric oxide synthase inhibitors for use as anti-inflammatory drugs.

He thinks a compound in this class could be made to reduce the amount of nitric oxide bacteria can produce, reducing their ability to resist antibiotics. That would mean researchers would not need to discover new antibiotics.

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