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Google Algorithm to Search Out Hospital Superbugs
Googling Yourself writes "Researchers in the UK plan to use Google's PageRank algorithm to find how super-bugs like MRSA spread in a hospital setting. Previous studies have discovered how particular objects, like doctors' neckties, can harbor infection, but little is known about the network routes by which bugs spread. Mathematician Simon Shepherd plans to build a matrix describing all interactions between people and objects in a hospital ward, based on observing normal daily activity."
They're not using the PageRank algorithm itself, but an algorithm similar to how they conjecture Google works. In actuality, they're building a graph of interactions and finding the most linked to nodes, which is a fairly easy graph problem and nothing too exciting. It's the novelity of using this in hospitals that makes it notable. The PageRank reference is just for media attention/allowing non-compsci people to understand it, though.
Markov chains are the original, mathematical theory. This is just an application of Markov chains to tracking disease transmission, a fairly common method that long pre-dates Google. Google's page rank algorithm is another application of Markov chains to citation ranking (and, as it turns out, it wasn't the first time that it was applied to that either).
I suspect a nexus might be found at the unwashed hands of professionals who fail to follow established procedures for hygiene.
"Google's" "PageRank algorithm" is actually an implementation of a very powerful, general mathematical principle. Math applies to more than just the web.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
The source of the vast majority of hospital infections is well known, well documented and well understood: doctors, nurses and other staff don't wash their hands very often.
Aside from nagging people to wash their hands, not much works.
For purely selfish reasons I love that the superbugs invasion means I no longer have to wear ties when seeing my patients. Now if I could just figure out a way to get rid of my nasty pager. :)
There's also a view that having (letting?) staff wear their uniforms outside the hospital both brings in bugs from outside the hospital and lets them out into the real world.
There are some absolutely basic things that the NHS could do, but for some inexplicable (cost related?) reasons won't do. It doesn't need high-tech investigations and it's not rocket science - just basic hygene sense.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
McAfee.
Do I really need "anitbacterial" dishwashing liquid? The point about hospital superbugs is that the ones we don't kill become the ones we can't kill.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Looking for tuberculosis? Buy tuberculosis now!
Towards the Singularity.
...in Carry on Films and they had Babera Windsor's tits in patients' faces. None of this hygiene nonsense. No wait, there was that time in Carry on Doctor when she was in the bath and Jim Dale crashed through the window.
Script kiddies ate my sig.
Since MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus) is in the general population, patients treated with the typical antibiotic coverage of Ancef (a penicillin derivative) would not effectively kill the superbug lying on the patients skin. After surgery the patient develops a MRSA infection - is it from improper technique - no.
Yes infections can occur that way, but the 2 infections my partner had last year were probably from that mechanism. One patient was a public servant who came into contact with many people, and often had to be in a locker room type environmenmt, the other was a long term nursing home patient.
CUrrently it is not cost efective to survey everyone to see if they have resistant bugs.
..........FULL STOP.
In 2005, Britain's going nucking futs over MRSA. It was used as a reason to justify taking the NHS (National Health Service. Translation: universal healthcare) and molding it into whatever each Party wanted the world to be like. You couldn't pick up a newspaper without SuperBug this or SuperBug that on the front page.
Meanwhile, in America, the sound of crickets gently chirp. Chreeeep, chreeeep, chreeeep. Nobody gave a tinker's cuss about MRSA. At all.
OK. That's the scene. People in Britain thinking that MRSA is going to turn the country into 28 Days Later. America thinks MRSA is some rapper's name.
And then the official numbers came out for MRSA deaths for that year.
England/Wales, in 2005: 1629 deaths.
United States, in 2005: 18,650 deaths.
There are more people in the States than England and Wales. So I looked up the numbers for the land of the free and the home of the Whopper and Pommie/Limey/Rosbif-TaffyLandSheepCountry.
US population at the time - 295 million.
Eng-Cym population in the last census (and it won't have doubled from 2001-2005) - 52 million.
So what were the chances this would have killed YOU? Well, remote (if you're reading this now), but what about back then? The equation is:
[population of the country in 2005] / [deaths from MRSA there in 2005]
= [chance of being killed by MRSA in 2005].
The chances you had of MRSA killing you in England and Wales, with everyone going mental over it, in 2005 - 1 in 32,000.
Chances of dying the same death in a country with market-driven health system, where people are NOT specifically looking for MRSA - 1 in 15,800.
I'll let those numbers sink in. British readers might want to look at them again and make sure up is still up.
And now I'm going to pretend to be really stupid here: I could be spectacularly wrong, but it LOOKS like the numbers prove a person was twice more likely to kick the bucket from MRSA in the States than in Blighty (OK, England and Wales. I'll let someone else add Scotland and Northern Ireland to the mix). America, with its pay-as-you-go health system making monster profits, not as good as a system some people would tell you is on its last legs.
What was even funnier (maybe 'funnier' isn't quite the right word) was the excuse used in the UK National Statistics Office for why their number was so HIGH:
This is either the longest and most researched Flaimbait ever to appear on SlashDot, or I just blew. Your. Freaking. Mind.
Unless you're American: in which case, just think of this like the slang you don't understand in Doctor Who, words like 'chav' and 'ASBO'.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
Ah! I remember this Google Algorithm! Good old days, when you could just download Google Paper from Google Journal. Now days you have to pay real money, in the currency of Google Country. These evil journals sucking up public money. In our days we had only Google Motto to follow.
Although surfaces can harbor bacteria, studies of kitchen cutting boards find that not all surfaces behave the same. Paradoxically, wooden cutting boards (which seems like a perfect porous environment for retaining bacteria) actually do better than plastic cutting boards in terms of being bacteria free. Apparently the pore in the wood pull the bacteria fro the surface as the wood drives. The result is a bacteria-free surface. On plastic cutting boards, the bacteria remain on the surface adhered to microscratches. There's also the issue of the role of indigenous microflora on the surfaces such as human skin (studies suggest that dozens of different types of bacteria live without causing infection on human skin). Some scientists wonder if antibacterial soaps do more harm than good -- killing off benign bacteria and create strong "natural" selection pressures that favor highly virulent strains.
I hope these studies carefully document the types of surfaces (and surface treatments) to help trace the infectiousness of different types of contacts.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
So the vector is Pigeons?
We badly need some innovation. Attempting to sterilize an area is not always the solution. The current technique of sterilizing and tracking and destroying bugs has the unintended consequence of creating increasingly harmful bacteria.
Instead, we should develop and breed innocuous (not harmful to humans) forms of bacteria that feed off the same food sources as does MRSA and inject these into the hospital environment . These innocuous bacteria would be designed to out-compete MRSA, reducing the risk of lethal infection in hospitals.
Yes, it's highly infectious. Yes, it's resistant to methicillin, but I thought a superbug was one where you couldn't use any (known) antibiotic to treat it. You can still treat MRSA with vancomycin.
VRSA, on the other hand, is pretty much a death sentence at this stage of the game... That's the one I always thought of as a superbug.
(Information from new-employee training at Naples Community Hospital, Circa July 2003)
Maybe, just maybe, this will produce something useful. The problem is that most of the hospitals that are likely to participate in this type of study are the good ones, and there's a world of difference in between the procedures at a good hospital and at a bad one. And hospitals where staph spreads are--as a rule--bad ones.
Ayn Rand is endorsing Ron Paul. It's like how one infection points to another- just like Google!
There will be a Scrubs marathon on shortly; everything you need to know about the interactions in the day and life of a hospital can be aquired there no need for expensive time consuming matrix's to be built. Besides, it probably paints a picture prettier than what we might find out from real life. Side note: Who want's to be my "Brown Bear"; I desperately need a good buddy to set me up with hot chicks.
Brings a whole new meaning to "I'm feeling lucky".
"Antibacterial" household products contain something different than soap. What thing that is, varies.
/. after all.
I'm not a chemist or a doctor. And I assume that if this is mistaken in any way, someone will correct me, since this is
For household use you don't need antibacterial agents to effectively wash your hands - because the act of actual abrasion with the surface-tension eliminating properties of soap removes most things from your skin. For the most part, your hands don't harbor a lot of problems IN the surface, because your body is busy killing that.
In my opinion, there are also two major classes of these antibacterial agents - which I'll classify as "simple" and "complex" To my knowledge, it's extremely difficult and rare for bacteria to become resist to "simple" antibacterial agents.
Simple antibacterial agents are things that kill everything. Like bleach (e.g. Chlorox), or high concentrations of alcohol (e.g. Glass Plus). To a lesser extent vinegar, ammonia, salt... These things are not necessarily good for people, but people are really big and can avoid drinking them in really high doses... but they're still really bad for bacteria etc to swim completely in and they get annihilated, because these things basically just melt cell walls.
For the most part these are quite safe to clean with... they don't especially build up in your system, so as long as you never get a super high dose, usually by breathing or drinking it, you're safe. But I don't recommend you swim in bleach, get it in your eyes, and drink it either. Those example cleaners are relatively harmless in most controlled cleaning situations - but there are plenty of options in this category that aren't - like strong acids - we just don't usually put them in consumer cleaners in high doses.
So I have no objection to, say, a little bleach being added to surface cleaners.
The antibiotics you take orally are wildly different, and must be complex. They can't be TOO bad for you, or they'd be rat poison and not a drug. So they try to attack something bacteria-cell specific that human cells are immune to. But bacteria operate in a range of ways, so often this only works on some bacteria. And they mutate... so the more specific and narrow the antibiotic is, the easier it is for the bacteria to become immune. The broader it is, the more likely it hurts you.
Some companies - because it's what the uneducated consuming public wants - are putting vaguely these kind of agents in household cleaning products. Not EXACTLY the same drugs we're taking orally. But chemicals that have narrow, complex effects on bacteria, which probably encourage mutation. Those mutations may or may not impact the effectiveness of current or future drugs.
HOWEVER, as much as I think antibacterial hand soap is pretty high on the list of evils, it's not NEARLY as bad as the number of people who merely don't finish the antibiotics they were prescribed. Those people are ruining the world.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
wooden cutting boards are awesome - but the explanation I always heard was the tannins etc in the wood being actively antibacterial.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
take meth and post on slashdot
yer a little high strung there kiddo
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
not your useless hyperbole, the wikipedia article would still deserve to rank higher than your scientific paper or expert description of the bacteria, because it summarizes the issue in plain english, in a few paragraphs, which is all 99% of searchers are interested in
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Triclosan is the substance that most "antibacterial" soaps contain. It has very little to do with the development of antibiotic resistance. However, several studies have shown that soap and water are about as effective with it, as without it, in terms of preventing infections.
Development of antibiotic resistance has to do with 3 factors:
1. Overprescription of antibiotics - i.e. giving Abx to someone who has a cold. Whether it's self-medication, or done by an MD is irrelevant in this case.
2. Improper prescription of antibiotics - i.e. not everything in the world can be cured with a 5-day course of Azithromycin (Zithromax). Too many doctors just hand it out like candy. We should really rely on testing for bug susceptibility in many more cases than we do now.
3. Improper use of antibiotics - i.e. not finishing the course. This is an old problem, that seems to have no solution, especially when it comes to the "internet-know-it-all" patients... who think that 5 minutes of googling qualifies them to self-medicate at will.
Swapping and sharing of. Stop it.
Based on the first data available, following graph edges back from known infection sites leads to... Kevin Bacon.
.evom ton seod gis eht
Neither troll not flamebait, but I call bullshit on this one.
Talk to the people in the medical business - they all know what the causes are:
1. Dirty people with dirty habits, leading to
2. Contaminated interactions, leading to
3. Dirty facilities, where you can catch almost anything.
The only reason MRSA, (or other nasties like 'difficile') get the news is that the usual solution for sloppy practise - an assload of antibiotics - does not work. Mainly due - again - to sloppy practise (over-prescription).
But applying the simple rules of cleanliness and discipline that have existed since Lister and Florence Nightingale is not as exciting as using 'Google-like approaches', I suppose.
Or even the radio star?
-- Boycott Shell
I was following a doctor on rounds one day going from room to room. We got to one patient's room and he wanted to chart something. So he went to reach for his pen, but instead he pulled out a thermometer. "Damn" he said, "you know what this means? Some asshole has my pen!"
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
But will it have a cool visual display that I can't stop staring at like the Zomie Infection Simulator?
I think before any high-tech solutions, a much simpler thing to do would be better training. Many doctors don't seem to be particularly careful about what they touch.
I think doctors should be required to observe each other during training, spot potentially unsafe practices, and give each other feedback.
Furthermore, there should be random checks for the sterility of gloves and instruments.
...which will reveal, of course, that Wikipedia is the most common disease-spreading agent.
If only it were as simple as you say!
Staphylococcus aureus lives on normal skin. You're probably crawling with billions of these little buggers. Such is life. Most of the time, methicillin-sensitive Staph outgrows the methicillin-resistant Staph (in theory, there is a difference in rate of replication, since MRSA has that extra cassette that it needs to copy)
But in certain places in the U.S., community-acquired MRSA infections make up as many as 35% of all infections (from simple skin infections to bacterial sepsis), at which point isolation practices are pretty pointless, particularly since they've never been proven to actually decrease rate of transmission. (Although granted, if you die from MRSA, it's going to be hospital-acquired MRSA that gets you.)
Other multi-drug resistant bacteria are prevalent in the environment--in the soil, on flat surfaces, in computer keyboards--and don't cause illness in immunocompetent people. Examples are Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter baumanii, Enterobacter cloacae, Stenotrophomonas maltophila, and Alcaligenes xylosoxidans. But Gram-negative rods, more so than Gram-positive cocci, are likely to kill you in less than 24 hours. (Necrotizing fasciitis--caused by so-called "flesh-eating bacteria"--is more likely caused by Group A Streptococcus, which is very sensitive to straight-up penicillin, and MSSA)
MRSA and other multi-drug resistant bacteria are simply not transmitted by air. Respiratory isolation rooms (negative pressure rooms with separate air filters) are good for preventing the spread of pulmonary tuberculosis, and various non-fatal viral illnesses, but that's about it. And when you've got 30-40 kids with RSV, there's no way you're going to isolate all of them.
Most vectors of these bacteria are not sick from them, and they're so prevalent that it's not practical to exclude people who are colonized with this stuff. Most health-care workers are definitely colonized, for example, and it's no good preventing these people from working. Making people who have upper respiratory symptoms wear masks may be helpful, but making everyone do so? Studies don't show any difference in transmission.
Any linens that might have been contaminated are destroyed anyway.
The measures that have been proven to decrease transmission of bacteria and viruses are (1) thorough hand washing, meaning lathering up and running your hands under water for at least 15 seconds or (2) using the alcohol-based anti-bacterial gels (although this won't destroy Clostridium difficile spores) Everything else (masks, gowns, gloves), in terms of preventing transmission of these bacteria, is, according to the studies, infection control theater. (I'm not talking about universal precautions here, which definitely keep health care workers from getting HIV and hepatitis.)
And when you come in on a backboard with C-collar because you were in a car-crash, infection control sort of takes a back seat until they take care of your airway, breathing, and circulation. There's no way you're going to keep someone dying from trauma in a quarantined area until you make sure they're not colonized with any of this stuff.
Bottom line: wash you hands, and stop asking your physician for antibiotics whenever you or your kid have the sniffles. That'll cut the incidence of MRSA and other multi-drug resistant bacteria.
I repeat, Mod parent up and grandparent down