Voici une reconstruction du travail des groupes 23 à 26

Fighting staphylococcus aureus with clay?

There are not many alternative solutions for dealing with bacteria which are becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics.   A recent study brings a ray of hope, showing that the ionic composition of clay might grant it antibacterial benefits.

In the fight against bacteria the scope of actions is increasingly limited.  Antibiotics, which seemed to be the miracle cure for many infections less than a century ago, are now obsolete.  Bacteria communicate with each other and exchange resistance genes which allow them to combat antibacterials.  Resistance to multiple antibiotics has become a major public health problem, and new treatments are necessary.

Clay is a therapeutic substance which has been used since ancient times.  (The) Egyptians used it in the mummification process, and to treat diarrhea, abscesses and injuries.  During the First World War, German and Austrian doctors also used it to cure dysentery, which is an infectious disease of the colon. Nowadays clay is used in naturopathy or in beauty treatments.

A team from Arizona State University has just published a study in Plos One, that highlights the role of clay in eliminating pathogenic bacteria, such as Escheria coli or staphylococcus aureus.   The latter is responsible for numerous serious infections that can (even) lead to death.  Moreover, the appearance of staph A strains which are resistant to antibiotics and called MRSA makes their eradication extremely tough.

Clay has antibacterial properties

In this study, the scientists examined four clay samples which were more or less able to eliminate E coli and MRSA. In order to identify the elements of clay which are responsible for this antibacterial action, they compared their ionic composition.  Their analysis shows that the soluble fractions vary according to the metallic ions they contain, such as iron, copper, cobalt, nickel and zinc (ions).

More advanced experiments showed that an increase in the concentrations of zinc, nickel, cobalt and copper induced an antimicrobial effect against E. coli.  In order to destroy the MRSA the concentrations of zinc, cobalt and copper are crucial.  Nevertheless, the quantity of ions isn’t a satisfactory criterion and other parameters, like pH, ion solubility or temperature affect the antibacterial properties of clay.

According to the authors, clay might be an effective alternative treatment against bacteria which are becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics.  However, these materials can contain toxic metals like lead or mercury.  Precautions need to be taken in order to minimize the risk of exposure.

Voici une proposition de résumé pour le texte sur les psychotropes :

Ce document  de  juin 2013 paru sur medicalnews today.com porte sur une publication dans Nature Reviews Neuroscience sur la recherche et les psychotropes.

Les chercheurs prétendent que l’interdiction de ces substances exacerbe leur nocivité et représente la pire censure pour la recherche depuis 300 ans.

L’un des auteurs affirme que ces substances sont moins néfastes que l’on prétend,  et que la recherche tend à démontrer qu’elles sont en fait relativement inoffensives.

Des psychotropes, comme la psilocybine, pourraient traiter le syndrome de stress post-traumatique et la dépression.

Selon une étude de 2011 le principe actif du cannabis peut aider les patients atteints d’un cancer à retrouver l’appétit et l’odorat.

Les chercheurs et leurs collègues demandent une réglementation aménagée qui leur permettrait d’étudier la conscience et les mécanismes du cerveau afin de trouver des nouveaux traitements.

P.S

Voici un lien vers un article à propos du professeur Nutt qui vient d’être récompensé pour sa prise de position

Voici le fruit de votre travail collectif :

The ‘google’ of side effects

A team of doctors, pharmacists and computer scientists has designed software which hunts down surfers’ comments about their use of medication.

“My doctor prescribed (me) 75mg of Effexor on Saturday and two hours later I felt really ill… Sweating, nausea, numbness in my arms and legs, an awful headache and insomnia…” This kind of comment, posted in 2007 by someone called Jane74 on the Doctissimo website, is not covered by existing drug monitoring plans.

Nevertheless, specialized websites, where people share their experiences with drugs provide a wealth of information about adverse reactions. This is what Stéphane Schück, a doctor in public health specializing in epidemiology, president and medical director of Kappa Santé, noticed anyway.

This led to the idea for a computer tool able to exploit this huge quantity of textual data, called Detec’t which will be presented from June 13 to June 16 at Centquatre in Paris, at Futur en Seine, an annual event dedicated to digital innovation.

(About) sixty products under supervision

Designed by a team of doctors, pharmacists, computer scientists, statisticians and mathematicians, Detec’t is a search engine which scans almost a dozen sites and public forums, such as Doctissimo or Atoute.org, (and) in which we enter the name of a drug. “Facebook and Twitter were not included because people don’t talk about that a lot on those sites” Stéphane Shück notes.

The tool is set up for requests pertaining to the sixty most commonly used products in France: Tahor, paracetamol, Doliprane, and psychotropic and anxiolytic drugs and sleeping pills. Detec’t processes web surfers’ posts using text-mining software components which analyze semantics: the meaning of sentences, grammar, combined with statistics programs, designed in collaboration with a research team from Inserm.

“The idea is to spot how close two words are together, and to calculate the probability that the name of a drug is associated with a side effect” Stéphane Schück explains. Kappa Santé has also developed its own algorithms which can eliminate faux amis/false friends; aspirin is often associated with headaches, but does not cause them. “We also identified a whole discussion thread about Méliane, a 3rd generation contraceptive pill, but when we checked we saw that it was actually just somebody’s first name!”

The results can be displayed in two ways: statistical distribution of the side effects of a drug, shown on/as a graph, and internet users’ comments, ranked by relevance.

Everything is made anonymous, and any proper nouns and email addresses in messages are automatically deleted. “The hard part is handling the way people talk about things related to medication: hangover has to be translated by ‘headaches’, ‘nausea’… As a result we had to build a dictionary of synonyms.”

Detec’t is still a prototype. Eventually Kappa Santé plans to make it part of the services they provide to the pharmaceutical industry, in particular to compensate for the considerable shortcomings in spontaneous reporting of adverse reactions, a legal procedure which is somewhat demanding for doctors whose duty it is.

Voici ma proposition de résumé :

Cet article, qui a été publié sur le site ScienceDaily en juin 2013, rend compte d’une étude menée par l’université d’Iowa aux Etats Unis dont l’objectif était de réduire les infections postopératoires.

Les chercheurs ont estimé à 85% les infections dues aux staphylocoques qui proviennent des bactéries du patient. En effet, aux Etats Unis ces bactéries sont présentes dans le nez de 30% des adultes.

L’équipe de l’Iowa recommande de faire un prélèvement dans la cavité nasale avant une intervention chirurgicale pour repérer la présence de SARM et SASM. Dans le cas d’un test positif, il faut utiliser une pommade nasale dans les jours qui précèdent l’intervention, puis lors de l’opération un antibiotique spécifique doit être employé pour ces patients, et un antibiotique général pour les autres.

Ces directives pourraient réduire le recours aux interventions supplémentaires qui coûtent de $40 000 à $100 000, et ceci à l’aide d’une pommade qui coûte seulement $20.

Les essais cliniques ont démarré à une vingtaine d’hôpitaux, et l’équipe espère que cela deviendra la norme dans l’ensemble du pays.

A retenir :

Il y aura un contrôle d’expression écrite à la dixième séance.

N’oubliez pas de fournir un justificatif en cas d’absence.  L’absentéisme sera signalé à l’administration.

Liens utiles donnés à la première session :

• http://anglaismedical.u-bourgogne.fr/
• http://www.medecine.ups-tlse.fr/anglais/
• Linguee