Study: Cipro overprescribed
A new study heightens concerns that Cipro and related
broad-spectrum antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones are
over-prescribed, accelerating bacterial resistance to the drugs and
reducing their ability to treat infections. The UC San
Francisco-led study evaluated the records of more than 13,000
patients across the country hospitalized for
“community-acquired” pneumonia ““ pneumonia that
developed before the patient was hospitalized. The researchers
found that fluoroquinolones were widely prescribed to patients
discharged from the hospital, even when tests showed that
narrow-spectrum antibiotics were appropriate.
“Overuse of fluoroquinolones for infections that can be
treated with narrow-spectrum antibiotics has seriously eroded their
effectiveness,” said Joseph Guglielmo, UCSF clinical pharmacy
professor.
UCLA scientists examine Milky Way
UCLA astronomers and colleagues present the highest resolution
mid-infrared picture ever taken of the Milky Way galaxy’s
center, which reveals details about dust swirling into the black
hole that dominates the region.
The image was taken by a team led by Mark Morris, UCLA professor
of astronomy, at the Keck II telescope in Hawaii.
Morris and his colleagues used an infrared camera built at
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The
camera, called the Mid-Infrared Large-Well Imager, or MIRLIN, used
three different infrared wavelengths to build the color composite
image.
The mid-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum comprises
the wavelengths at which room temperature objects glow most
brightly.