It took years to solve the mystery elephant deaths. Now, the threat is spreading

Elephants that dropped dead in Zimbabwe were victims of an obscure bacteria combined with extreme heat. Scientists fear more elephants – and other species – could suffer the same fate…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/01/mystery-elephant-deaths-botswana-zimbabwe-pasteurella-bisgaard-taxon-45-aoe

Bacteria from meat likely to cause urinary tract infections, study says - The Washington Post

"Most people understand that eating uncooked meat, or accidentally ingesting bacteria from meat, can cause you to have an upset stomach," said Lance B. Price, a professor of environmental and occupational health at GWU and one of the scientists leading the study. "But now we also know that specific varieties of E. coli, coming from raw meat, are also causing hundreds of thousands of UTIs."…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/03/23/bacteria-meat-uti-urinary-tract-gwu-study-ecoli/

Racism takes its toll on brain and body | EurekAlert!

"This new study sheds light on the broad impact of exposure to racism on emotions, brain activity, inflammatory markers in the blood, and the composition of the gut microbiome. We would not be surprised to learn that exposure to racism affects how we feel and how we cope with this exposure and other life stresses. However, this study goes further to highlight brain patterns of response to racism and other factors that affect physical health, including the types of bacteria growing in the gut and the levels of inflammation in the body. These are factors that influence many disease processes in the body."…

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/974349

Risk of brain-eating amoeba, flesh-eating bacteria may increase due to climate change: Experts - ABC News

Infections are rare, but pathogens and bacteria thrive in warmer waters...

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/risk-brain-eating-amoeba-flesh-eating-bacteria-increase/story

Daniel Dennett: "From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds"...

How did we come to have minds? For centuries, this question has intrigued psychologists, physicists, poets, and philosophers, who have wondered how the human mind developed its unrivaled ability to create, imagine, and explain. Disciples of Darwin have long aspired to explain how consciousness, language, and culture could have appeared through natural selection, blazing promising trails that tend, however, to end in confusion and controversy. Even though our understanding of the inner workings of proteins, neurons, and DNA is deeper than ever before, the matter of how our minds came to be has largely remained a mystery. That is now changing, says Daniel C. Dennett. In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, his most comprehensive exploration of evolutionary thinking yet, he builds on ideas from computer science and biology to show how a comprehending mind could in fact have arisen from a mindless process of natural selection. Part philosophical whodunit, part bold scientific conjecture, this landmark work enlarges themes that have sustained Dennett’s legendary career at the forefront of philosophical thought.
https://youtu.be/IZefk4gzQt4

Here's a New Reason You Should Worry About Antibiotics -- TIME

Alexandra Sifferlin is a writer for TIME. She covers public health issues including infectious and chronic disease, big ideas in medicine, and breaking news. There's a global push for doctors and patients to use antibiotics more judiciously, largely because overusing them is contributing to growing resistance—meaning that some infections that were previously treatable no longer respond well to medications. Now, a new study in mice suggests that antibiotics may come with another potential health consequence. They could be interfering with the microbiome—a community of bacteria that live in the gut and elsewhere—and these changes may be passed down through generations and may cause disease.
http://time.com/5035160/antibiotics-colitis/

5 Scary Diseases Climate Change May Awaken from the Melting Permafrost | Alternet

Each layer that melts exposes germs dating back thousands of years....
https://www.alternet.org/environment/5-scary-diseases-climate-change-may-awaken-melting-permafrost

And Now the Good News #255: Solar Eclipse!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHRIzlK_0i4&feature=youtu.be

Oral sex spreading unstoppable bacteria - BBC News

Oral sex is producing dangerous gonorrhoea and a decline in condom use is helping it to spread, the World Health Organization has said. It warns that if someone contracts gonorrhoea, it is now much harder to treat, and in some cases impossible. The sexually transmitted infection is rapidly developing resistance to antibiotics. Experts said the situation was "fairly grim" with few new drugs on the horizon....
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-40520125

Deadly ‘Superbugs’ That Don’t Respond To Treatment Are Getting Closer Than Ever

For years, doctors have warned about the dangers posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which could eventually make common ailments impossible to treat with drugs. But now, the day of the ultimate superbug is closer than ever.

On Thursday, researchers revealed that for the first time, they’ve found a case of U.S. bacteria resistant to last-resort antibiotics. Researchers at Walter Reed found the germ in a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman diagnosed with an E. coli infection last month. The E. coli carried a specific gene, MCR-1, that rendered it immune to the antibiotic colistin — the drug doctors turn to to kill an infection when nothing else works.

The discovery “heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug resistant bacteria,” doctors warned in the report about the woman’s case....
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2016/05/27/3782661/deadly-superbug-gene-comes-to-us/

A Hidden Factor in Stroke Severity: The Microbes in Your Gut

The bacteria that inhabit our guts have become key players for neuroscientists. A growing body of research links them to a wide array of mental and neurological disorders—from anxiety and depression to schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. Now a study in mice published this week in Nature Medicine suggests that striking the right microbial balance could cause changes in the immune system that significantly reduce brain damage after a stroke—the second leading cause of both death and disability for people around the globe....
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-hidden-factor-in-stroke-severity-the-microbes-in-your-gut/