Author Archives: Nicola Fawcett
Mortality risks associated with emergency admissions during weekends and public holidays: an analysis of electronic health records
Published this week in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet: Mortality risks associated with emergency admissions during weekends and public holidays: an analysis of electronic health records Background Weekend hospital admission is associated with increased mortality, but the contributions of … Continue reading
Help us change the way Tuberculosis is diagnosed and treated
An online crowdsourcing project has been launched by MMM researchers to study antibiotic resistance in Tuberculosis (TB) with the help of the public. You can try out the project for yourself on the Zooniverse website (which contains instructions for how to take … Continue reading
Safely reducing antibiotic use in the acutely ill: but at the cost of more admissions?
Can we reduce antibiotic use in hospitals? And can it be done safely? This is the question that Modernising Medical Microbiology Researcher Dr Nicola Fawcett wanted to investigate in research published in the BMJOpen today. We know from many previous … Continue reading
Clean Hands! Working with local schools
Clean your hands! Members of the Modernising Medical Microbiology (MMM) Group have been working to improve hand hygiene education in collaboration with local schools. They taught sixth form students at Cokethorpe School about how germs spread as part of a lunch-time … Continue reading
Finding the genetic changes in bacteria
In research published today in Nature Microbiology, MMM researchers have shown how powerful new DNA analysis techniques can detect mutations in bacteria which cause difficult to treat infections. Sarah Earle, Jessie Wu and Jane Charlesworth worked with other researchers in … Continue reading
Tuberculosis: Why we’re working to cure TB
Dr Ana Cruz is a Research Fellow with Modernising Medical Microbiology, and a key part of the new CRyPTIC Project, where we will aim to use cutting-edge technologies to improve the treatment of TB. She writes… Why … Continue reading
Global team aim for faster TB Diagnosis
As World TB day (24 March) marks global efforts to eliminate tuberculosis as a public health problem by 2035, Oxford University researchers, in partnership with Public Health England (PHE), will lead a new worldwide collaboration called CRyPTIC to speed up diagnosis of the … Continue reading
Using DNA analysis to track resistant E.coli around the world
A globally successful, antibiotic-resistant E. coli strain causing human infection – why and how has it spread? Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a type or species of bacteria that is a common cause of infection in all age groups. It … Continue reading
Pneumonia is increasing – and we need to plan for it
Why are diagnoses of pneumonia increasing? This is the question that our Research Statistician, Phuong Quan, (and other scientists from MMM), set out to answer in a paper published this week. We looked at the hospital database of … Continue reading
