An abbreviated version of CDDEP's weekly digest of public health news, focusing on research in the United States.

Nashville Public Radio airs a piece on the GAIN Act, a piece of legislation designed to encourage new antibiotic development by delaying generic market entry and speeding FDA approval times.  The GAIN Act is included in the version of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) just passed by the U.S. Senate.

At the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies, a researcher reports a rise in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) that is resistant to chlorhexidine, an antiseptic, in pediatric cancer patients at Texas Children’s Hospital.

A public-private partnership between the pharmaceutical industry and Europe’s Innovative Medicines Initiative adds just under €223.7 million to the arsenal of funds to develop new antibiotic therapies.

An author of a recent New England Journal of Medicine paper on FDA drug approval timelines argues for improved post-marketing surveillance of approved drugs.  Pointing to another recent study on the link between azithromycin and cardiac risk, Harlan Krumholz calls for greater data sharing and systematic approaches to population-based safety research.

We know that exposure to antibiotics drives selection pressure for resistant bacteria.  But could it also lead to more rapid genetic mutation?  Wired Science’s Superbug unpacks a study suggesting that evolution also favors high mutation rates.

In mBio, researchers sequence 12 strains of MRSA that are resistant to the antibiotic vancomycin.

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