Biosynthetic origin of anthracimycin: a tricyclic macrolide from Streptomyces sp.
The Journal of Antibiotics advance online publication, December 2 2015. doi:10.1038/ja.2015.118
Authors: Enjuro Harunari, Hisayuki Komaki & Yasuhiro Igarashi
In vitro activity of dalbavancin and five comparator agents against common and uncommon Gram-positive organisms isolated from cancer patients
The Journal of Antibiotics advance online publication, December 2 2015. doi:10.1038/ja.2015.120
Authors: Kenneth V I Rolston, Weiqun Wang, Lior Nesher, Samuel A Shelburne & Randall A Prince
Curromycin A as a GRP78 downregulator and a new cyclic dipeptide from Streptomyces sp.
The Journal of Antibiotics advance online publication, November 25 2015. doi:10.1038/ja.2015.115
Authors: Yoichi Hayakawa, Minami Akimoto, Akari Ishikawa, Masumi Izawa & Kazuo Shin-ya
New p-terphenyls from the fruiting bodies of Pseudomerulius curtisii and their antioxidant activity
The Journal of Antibiotics advance online publication, November 25 2015. doi:10.1038/ja.2015.117
Authors: Byung Soon Hwang, In-Kyoung Lee & Bong-Sik Yun
Natural product-derived quaternary ammonium compounds with potent antimicrobial activity
The Journal of Antibiotics advance online publication, November 18 2015. doi:10.1038/ja.2015.107
Authors: Maureen D Joyce, Megan C Jennings, Celina N Santiago, Madison H Fletcher, William M Wuest & Kevin PC Minbiole
Education is widely recognized as one of the cornerstones of successful antimicrobial stewardship programmes. There is evidence of important knowledge flaws around antimicrobial prescribing among both medical students and clinicians. Educational interventions improve antimicrobial prescribing, but traditional tools may be insufficient to deliver training to meet the complex demands of global healthcare professionals working across a diverse range of healthcare and resource settings. The educational solutions increasingly need to be timely, efficient, pragmatic, high quality, aligned to the needs of the professional in a specific context, sustainable and cost-effective. Online learning has been playing a growing role in education about antimicrobial stewardship and the recent phenomenon of massive open online courses (MOOCs) offers novel and additional opportunities to deliver relevant information to a wide range of people. Additional research on MOOCs as an educational approach is needed in order to define their effectiveness, sustainability and the best ways to achieve the intended results. Although the precise value of new online strategies such as MOOCs is ill defined, they certainly will have an important place in increasing awareness and improving antimicrobial prescribing.
Traditional antibiotic dosing was not designed for today's escalating antibiotic resistance, lack of novel antibiotics and growing complexity in patient populations. Dosing that ensures optimal antibiotic exposures should be considered essential to increase the likelihood of effective patient treatment. Given the variability in these exposures across different patients, a ‘one-dose-fits-all’ approach is increasingly problematic. Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of the β-lactams, the most widely used antibiotic class, is underutilized in certain populations. Clinical experience with β-lactam TDM remains relatively scarce. Patients most likely to benefit from such an intervention include the critically ill, the obese, the elderly and those with cystic fibrosis. Most centres actively performing β-lactam TDM target a minimum 100% of the time during the dosing interval that the free (unbound) concentration of antibiotic exceeds the MIC of the pathogen (100% fT>MIC), which is higher than a traditional target supported by in vitro data. Ideally, isolated pathogens should undergo MIC testing along with TDM on a regular basis, allowing clinicians to address the triad of bug, drug and patient (‘mug’) in equal measure.
