Saturday, July 20, 2013

The Real Cause Of Typhoid Fever Accidentally Discovered




Before It's News | Popular Health





The Real Cause Of Typhoid Fever Accidentally Discovered



It's often the case in science that things are discovered by accident. Alexander Fleming uncovered the secrets of antibiotics with a bout of serendipity – coupled with an intelligent mind to recognize his good fortune. Now, it seems that scientists at Yale University have lucked out, too: they've discovered the real cause of typhoid fever. Image credit: blakespot via Flickr | Typhoid fever is a disease that dates back to before ancient Greece and still causes as many as 200,000 deaths worldwide each year, roughly the population of Birmingham, Ala.









Ocean Discovery: Possible Anthrax, MRSA Solution Found in the Sea



Anthony Gucciardi
Natural Society The natural world is full of healing solutions waiting to be discovered. From the forest plants to living creatures beneath the sea, we have likely only begun to tap the natural healing resources around us. One researcher with the University of California San Diego recently found a new chemical compound from the ocean, one which they believe has the potential to treat deadly bacteria like anthrax and MRSA, and one which they are excitedly plotting to turn into a drug.
William Fenical of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his team of colleagues found the compound on a microorganism called Streptomyces, which they first found off the coast of Santa Barbara in 2012. The compound, which they’ve since named anthramcimycin, shows promising results in the lab.
But, like many natural substances recently discovered across the globe, interest in this one came mainly from a large pharmaceutical company—one who funded Fenical’s research and no-doubt plays a significant role in Fenical’s hope that they can turn anthracimycin into a new antibiotic drug.
Fenical is partly responsible for founding the marine biomedicine department at Scripps and he says the seas are a “vast resource for new materials that could one day treat a variety of diseases and illnesses.”
As for anthracimycin, Fenical and others believe it could help destroy the antibiotic strains of bacteria like MRSA because it is an entirely new chemical compound, one such bacteria has not built up a resistance to.
MRSA, and other infections like it, have evolved overtime to resist treatment from traditional antibiotics.






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