Deadly, Drug-Resistant Fungal Infections Are Spreading – Scientists Just Discovered a Potential Treatment - ScienceAlert

When cancer cells learn to survive a drug designed to stop them, where do you turn next? A new study points to an unexpected possibility: a medicine used to treat parasitic worms. Researchers combined the deworming medicine with a targeted lung cancer drug. In laboratory experiments, the pairing reduced resistant cancer-cell viability. In mice, tumors took longer to double in size with the combination than with either drug alone. The idea was to find a weakness in cells that had learned to withstand treatment, then put that weakness under pressure. "The exciting message is that drug resistance may not make cancer cells invulnerable; it may leave them with weaknesses that we can target," pharmacology researcher Shakta Mani Satyam of RAK Medical and Health Sciences University in the United Arab Emirates told ScienceAlert. The study, published in PLOS ONE, paired gefitinib, a targeted cancer treatment, with mebendazole, a medicine used against parasitic worm infections. It focused on one model of EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer that had become resistant to gefitinib.(Matthias Tunger/DigitalVision/Getty Images)EGFR is a protein that helps relay signals telling cells to grow.

A gut pathogen that causes diarrhea and vomiting is morphing into a dangerous and difficult-to-treat sexually transmitted infection (STI). In the United States, roughly 450,000 people acquire shigellosis each year, which can lead to dysentery. Historically, this highly contagious bug has mostly been spread through contaminated food or water during travel, and among young children in day care. But since the turn of the century or so, Shigella bacteria have emerged as a sexually transmitted infection as well. Shigella infections can make anyone sick, but they are now considered 'endemic' in some communities of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM). Several of the strains transmitted in these communities have grown resistant to multiple antibiotics. Some are now superbugs, on the brink of becoming untreatable. A recent analysis from the US CDC found that among nearly 17,000 Shigella isolates, versions that were extensively drug-resistant (XDR) rose from 2011 to 2023. In 2011, isolates that were resistant to five commonly used antibiotics made up 0 percent of the samples. By 2023, they made up 8.5 percent.

There's a new fungus amongus, and it's raising red flags among health care experts because it resists all the major antifungal treatments. The discovery involves Candidozyma auris (formerly known as Candida auris), an emerging fungal pathogen that has already become a serious problem in hospitals around the world. Since it was first described in 2009, this fungus has spread to more than 60 countries across six continents, causing healthcare-associated outbreaks and invasive infections, with mortality rates of 30–50 percent reported in some situations. The fungus can persist in healthcare environments and spread easily between patients. Because of its combination of antifungal resistance and potential for wider spread, the World Health Organization designated C. auris a critical-priority fungal pathogen in 2022. But the particular strain of this fungus described in a new paper has something especially troubling going for it: laboratory testing found it resistant to all four major classes of antifungal drugs. The isolate was recovered from a 28-year-old woman who developed a hospital-acquired surgical-site infection after elective surgery at a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.

Many scientists have been working feverishly to find effective solutions for breaking down plastics in an effort to reverse the growing pollution problem across the globe. Well, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Sandia National Laboratories may have found something for one type of plastic. The team has formulated an easy method for breaking down a durable plastic that currently lacks a usable recycling option. According to a news release, this method uses less energy and produces less waste than incineration, allowing for the full recovery of valuable fibres. The results were published in the journal, Science Advances. Plastic breakdown/University of Texas at Austin(University of Texas at Austin)"Before now, people might have avoided using these materials, despite their strength, durability and lightness, because they didn't have a good way to recycle them," said Zak Page, a UT associate professor of chemistry and an author on the paper, in a news release. "Switching to pDCPD (polydicyclopentadiene) might mean the same product can perform better, while also having a longer lifespan before it needs to be recycled.