In rats with experimental colitis, the marked increase in bacterial translocation in postcolitis rats has been reversed by melatonin administration. This is due to melatonin's anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic effects.

A potential diagnostic test that could help surgeons confirm or rule out the presence of infection-causing bacteria in prosthetic joints that require surgical revision has been developed by researchers at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered a possible target to treat bloodstream bacterial infections.

Scientists have identified the role of two proteins that contribute to disease-causing bacteria cells’ versatility in resisting certain classes of antibiotics.

Researchers from Italy found that a naturally occurring agent in frog skin may inhibit multi-drug resistant bacterial strains associated with hospital-acquired infections. They report their findings in the January 2008 journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

Premature babies are subject to a host of threats that can result in fetal/neonatal disease. In a study published in the January 2008 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, researchers from the University of Alabama–Birmingham Medical School and the Drexel University College of Medicine found that genital mycoplasmas are a frequent cause of congenital fetal infection.

In a study published in this week’s PLoS Medicine, researchers have found that more than one species of bacteria may be causing the infectious eye disease trachoma. Six million people – most of whom live in crowded and unhygienic conditions in the developing world – are blind because of the disease and many more are actively infected.

Over the course of the 20th Century, doctors waged war against infectious bacterial illness with the best new weapon they had: antibiotics.

Often called the most devastating epidemic in the recorded history of the world, the 1918 influenza virus pandemic was responsible for more than 40 million deaths across the globe. The incredible lethality of the 1918 flu strain is not well understood, despite having been under intense scrutiny for many years.

The production of melanin gives us sunburns, but it also helps invertebrate animals to encapsulate attacking fungi and parasites. Uppsala University researchers, in collaboration with Korean and Thai colleagues, can now show that melanin also protects against bacterial infections, at least in crayfish. The study is published in the latest Net edition of Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Bathing beaches and lakes could fail the new cleanliness standards set by the 2006 Bathing Waters Directive, but a new risk assessment tool developed by rural studies and water management experts may help reduce the transfer of disease causing bacteria from the farmed environment, according to scientists speaking today at the Society for General Microbiology’s 161st Meeting at the University of Edinburgh, UK, which runs from 3-6 September 2007.

Viruses found in the River Cam in Cambridge, famous as a haunt of students in their punts on long, lazy summer days, could become the next generation of antibiotics, according to scientists speaking today (Monday 3 September 2007) at the Society for General Microbiology’s 161st Meeting at the University of Edinburgh, UK, which runs from 3-6 September 2007.