My email and phone have been lighting up over the past few days about news reports describing a study presented at a recent scientific meeting in San Francisco. I wasn’t there and the results aren’t published, so I don’t have a lot to go on, but here are some highlights from the news article on

Bacteria are smarter than we give them credit for.
Or maybe we’re not a bright as we think we are.

Antimicrobial stewardship is sometimes (wrongly) assumed to simply be the practice of “using fewer antimicrobials,” but it’s more complex than that, because the issue is complex. At face value, overall reduction in antimicrobial use is

three-dogsI’ve written about this many times (probably because I get asked about it almost every day), but there’s not really a simple answer to the question “Does methicillin-resistant Staph. pseudintermedius pose a human health risk?

My typical answer is along the lines of “Yes, but…” with discussion about how rare Staph pseudintermedius (SP)

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other antibiotic-resistant bacteria are big problems. They account for millions of illnesses, thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in costs every year internationally. Antibiotic-resistance is a complex issue, but some people try to over-simplify (and under-analyse) the problem.

A recent article on Examiner.com is an example. Entitled "MRSA

While it shouldn’t come as a surprise considering other studies, a recent study in PLoS One (O’Brien et al 2012) has caused a bit of a stir in the US. This study, headed up by Dr. Tara Smith’s research group in Iowa, looked for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in retail pork. They bought