Antibacterial soaps show no health benefits over plain soaps and, in fact, may render some common antibiotics less effective, says a University of Michigan public health professor.

Inflammation from bacterial infections is linked to preterm births and deaths, according to researchers from Case Western Reserve University’s School of Dental Medicine and the Case School of Medicine. They found if receptors responding to the presence of dead or living bacteria in the placentas of mice can be blocked, the number of preterm deaths will decline by nearly half.

With the finding that fever is produced by the action of a hormone on a specific site in the brain, scientists have answered a key question as to how this adaptive function helps to protect the body during bacterial infection and other types of illness.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new therapeutic that neutralizes Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) more effectively than other treatments.

In 1928, Alexander Fleming opened the door to treating bacterial infections when he stumbled upon the first known antibiotic in a Penicillium mold growing in a discarded experiment.

Bacterial infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria such as Escherichia coli are frequently resistant to two or more antibiotics (multi-drug resistant). Because introduction of new antibiotics will not eliminate the problem of multi-drug resistance (mdr), mdr type infections constitute a major health threat, especially to patients that acquire such infections nosocomially.

Drug-resistant bacteria can complicate treatment after many surgical procedures. In particular, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which has been found in many healthcare settings, can be a serious post-operative complication. In a study published in the April issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology, researchers found MRSA infections in the eyes of 12 patients after refractive surgery.

Understanding why other bacteria become resistant to antibiotics could hold the key to understanding why tuberculosis takes so long to cure, say researchers in a policy paper in PLoS Medicine.