CHICAGO (AFP) — Thousands of physicians and scientists began meeting here Monday to debate ways to fight bacteria resistant to drugs and the effects of global-warming on germs.
The American Society for Microbiology meeting is billed as the world's biggest conference on disease-causing microbes.
For the first time at the annual event, "the keynote session is going to be on climate change and the impact on human disease," Jim Sliwa, spokesman for the American Society for Microbiology which is organizing the event, told AFP.
"We know that climate change is going to change the pattern of infectious diseases," he said.
"As global average temperature increases, we know ... for example, the malaria line in mountainous regions will continue to rise," he said.
"We know also in the tropics influenza is year-round. There is no influenza season, so as the temperature rises the tropical areas expand and we'll get more year-round influenza."
Presentations at the conference, which is expected to draw some 12,000 physicians, researchers and health care professionals, will address the problem of drug-resistant microbes such as tuberculosis, which kills two million people each year.
Pharmaceutical labs will present research on growing challenges such as the resistance of certain staphylococcus bacteria, known as SARM, to antibiotics -- a source of many in-hospital infections, the association said.
They will also discuss the risks of a possible epidemic of a form of bird flu, that is dangerous to humans and that could be passed from person to person.
Also on the agenda is the results of clinical trials on the effectiveness of anti-retroviral therapies on cancers in people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
British researchers meanwhile were to make a presentation on the antibiotic effects of statin drugs, which reduce cholesterol. Research seems to have revealed the mechanism by which chemical action of the liver gives the anti-cholesterol drugs anti-microbe properties.
The association Monday released a study showing a drop in the number of Americans who regularly wash their hands after using public restrooms, considered a key step in preventive hygiene.
The observational study found that only about three US adults in four (77 percent) washed their hands in public restrooms, a six percent drop from a similar study in 2005.
About 88 percent of women washed their hands after a visit to the lavatory, compared to just 66 percent men.
The frequency of handwashing observed by researchers conflicted with what most adults reported: In a telephone survey, 92 percent of adults reported washing their hands in public restrooms, far more than the 77 percent actually seen scrubbing up.
Other studies have shown that a worldwide campaign launched in 2005 by the World Health Organization to prompt medical personnel to wash and disinfect themselves before touching a patient yielded encouraging results, according to the conference program.
Inadequate hand-washing among doctors and nurses is responsible for millions of infections in hospitals around the world.
Researchers from France, Japan, and Britain will be in Chicago for the conference, formally titled the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, which runs through Thursday.
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