A research abstract authored by George P. Allen, Pharm.D., associate professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice within the University of New England School of Pharmacy, in collaboration with four Pharmacy students, was recently accepted to the World Microbe Forum conference.
The inaugural conference, held virtually in June, was a collaboration between the American Society for Microbiology, Federation of European Microbiological Societies, and several other entities. More than 5,000 people attended at the virtual conference, which focused on such topics as new infectious pathogens, antimicrobial resistance, the role of microbes in climate change, synthetic and applied microbiology, and political advocacy related to microbiology and antimicrobials.
The UNE group’s research focused on the increasing antimicrobial resistance to first-line therapies for the bacterium Shigella sonnei (S. sonnei), one of many species of Shigella known to cause the intestinal tract infection shigellosis.
Symptoms of shigellosis include watery or bloody diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps. Most people recover on their own; however, the infection can become serious in older adults or those with weakened immune systems. In fact, according to a 2019 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, drug-resistant Shigella species were listed as one of 11 microbes posing a “serious” threat to human health, with an estimated 77,000 drug-resistant infections per year.