antimicrobial

Using machine learning to super-charge anti-infective drug discovery: the case of Halicin

Jon Otter (@jonotter) Antibiotic resistance , , , ,

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Yes, it’s true. There is more to HCAI & AMR (and this blog) than COVID-19! To prove it, I’m posting on something different today – the use of AI to streamline the anti-infective drug discovery process. Scientists at MIT have used machine learning (aka “deep learning”) to improve the drug discovery process, by predicting antimicrobial activity in molecules that are different from known antibiotics. This process has yielded Halicin, a promising candidate molecule for a broad-spectrum antimicrobial agent – which is, of course, a long way from clinical trials!

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Effective stewardship: less antibiotic use and more hand hygiene

Guest Blogger antibiotic stewardship , , , , , , , ,

Rossana Rosa (bio below) writes a guest post, reflecting on this recent review and meta-analysis on the effectiveness of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programmes…

The first reports on the effects of Antimicrobial Stewardship Programmess date back to the mid-90s, and the interest in them has taken off in the past decade.

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Take care. Not antibiotics.

Jon Otter (@jonotter) Antibiotic resistance , , ,

Mindful of our need to up our game in terms of communication to non-experts around AMR-related issues, I have been scouting around for a good video to portray the basic of AMR, and came across this by Health Education England. It’s not the best animation that I have seen, but I quite like it – and the strap line at the end is interesting (“Take care. Not antibiotics”). I’d be interested in your views on this video, and please feel free to flag any other good ones out there.

English HCAI and AMR data at your Fingertips

Jon Otter (@jonotter) Antibiotic resistance , , , ,

PHE have just launched an interactive database for HCAI and AMR data from England using their ‘Fingertips’ platform. The HCAI data in the module has been available for years, but was buried in pretty dense Excel spreadsheets so tricky to visualise. The Fingertips platform makes data extraction and visualisation so easy even I can do it (example below).

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