Blog Posts

Yet another vaccine trial… but it’s not what you think!

10/2/2022

Wait! This isn’t a blog about another blah, blah, blah, SARS CoV2 vaccine… no way!

I’m REALLY bored of Covid-19… as I suspect you are too… so this week I’m going to write an update for a blog I wrote back in 2018. Do you remember 2018? Let me remind you:

The 2018 Winter Olympics were held in Pyeongchang, South Korea
Dawn Sturgess was murdered, and Charlie Rowley, Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were all poisoned with Novichok by Russian agents in Salisbury, UK
White rhinos became functionally extinct in the wild when the last male died in Kenya, Africa
Harry and Megan got married in Windsor, UK
Baby elephant Anjan was born unexpectedly to Thi Hi Way at Chester Zoo, UK…

Anjan the baby elephant! (Photo: Chester Zoo)

Is this V-day - Victory against Mandatory Vaccinations day?

31/1/2022

WARNING: ranting blog ahead!

Thursday is supposedly the day when everyone who works in a healthcare setting MUST have had their first Covid-19 vaccination dose. If not, they can no longer work in a patient facing role and will either be redeployed or made redundant according to UK Government policy. Mandatory vaccination is not the usual policy for the UK; in my opinion, forcing anyone to have a medical procedure against their will is highly unethical.

You can be forgiven for missing this abuse of Government power over the NHS and social care workforce… something more important keeps hogging the headlines, apparently the resident of No.11 has complained about the noise from the parties at No.10… or maybe No.11 just wasn’t invited to the party(s)… who knows…?

Say no to mandatory vaccination covid 19

Referee!!! What the heck is an Intermediate?

28/1/2022

There is a change coming to how you will see laboratory culture results reported, but will you know what it means?

Within the UK, as well as most of the rest of Europe, laboratories follow a standard procedure for testing whether bacteria are likely to respond to treatment with different antibiotics. You see this on reports where the laboratory says a bacterium is susceptible (or sensitive) to an antibiotic which they mark with an “S” or resistant to an antibiotic which they mark with an “R”.

But did you notice that sometimes the laboratory puts an “I” for intermediate? And if you did, did you know what intermediate means?

But Ref, what the heck does intermediate mean?!

Where do mutants come from?

21/1/2022

Don’t panic, I’m not about to get all birds and bees and storks on you, this is a microbiology blog after all… the picture is from “Sweet-Tooth” a great Netflix series where mutants are thought to be spreading a virus… timely huh?! Instead, we’re going to talk about where variants of SARS CoV2 might be arising and why they seem to pop up out of nowhere?

Look at this diagram:

5 ways to grant my New Year’s wish

13/1/2022

So, I thought I would start 2022 with a list of what I want from the year to come… and yes, like a lot of people, I want the impossible… an end to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Another £2 million goes up with a bang and a whizz!

Microbiology Xmas Wordsearch - Answers!

30/12/2021

So did you manage to find them all? Here are the answers for all of you still struggling to find those last few pesky bacterial names! Hope you all had a good Christmas and a bit of a break from work (and Covid).

Best wishes for the New Year!

Nuts & Bolts will be back week of the 10th January... see you then...

Click for pdf with answers

Microbiology Nuts & Bolts - Xmas Wordsearch

23/12/2021

For Christmas this year we've given you a fiendishly hard wordsearch. Hidden within these letters are the names of 20 bacterial species (NO, Covid-19 is NOT in this wordsearch) - can you find them all? If you can't do it, ask a colleague or your team, someone must be able to find them all...

Merry Christmas!

Microbiology Nuts & Bolts Xmas wordsearch 2021

Click for A4 PDF version - without word list

Above is the wordsearch without the word list if you are really wanting to make it tricky, otherwise the list is attached to the wordsearch below... answers after Christmas...

Click for A4 PDF version - with word list

P.S. Please don't phone your oncall Microbiologist for the answers, they don't have them either! You'll just have to be patient :-)

Little Miss C and Little Miss A

17/12/2021

If you were a Little Miss or Mr Man who would you be? Little Miss Naughty or Little Miss Fabulous? Mr Bump or Mr Perfect? Or would you be one of the brand new Little Miss or Mr Men; Little Miss Brave or Mr Calm? The choices seem almost endless! I like to think I’m Mr Clever, but ECIC thinks I’m more like Mr Silly… thanks a lot Little Miss Trouble!

Not all mutants are bad

10/12/2021

Okay, I’m not talking about the X-men, Wolverine, Rogue and Professor Xavier, let’s talk about mutations in viruses instead; Omicron is one such mutant…has anyone else noticed Omicron is an anagram of “moronic”? (Just me then hey!).

This wouldn’t have happened in Typhoid Mary’s day!

3/12/2021

“We have a septic lady who has just returned from a trip to India. She also has a headache and diarrhoea. We think she might have typhoid but want to cover for meningitis as well as this. What do you suggest?”

The Microbiologist listened as the Emergency Department (ED) Consultant expanded on the story with where exactly the patient had been in India, what she had been doing there and what pre-travel vaccinations she had had. It was a great presentation and showed that the Consultant had clearly been listening to the teaching on fever in a returning traveller that the Microbiologist had given the week before!

“Okay, she’s been to the North of India, we’d better cover for XDR typhoid as well as meningitis and other potential causes of sepsis. The best thing to do is start IV Meropenem 2g TDS, and if it’s not meningitis then we can reduce the dose to 1g later” replied the Microbiologist.

“Isn’t IV Ceftriaxone the normal first line for typhoid?” asked the ED Consultant.

“It is” replied the Microbiologist, “unless you have the XDR typhoid which is currently causing mayhem in Pakistan next to India, XDR is Ceftriaxone resistant and so you need Meropenem instead.”

“Crikey!” exclaimed the ED Consultant, “long gone are the days when I could treat this with Ampicillin…I’m sure Typhoid Mary would have accepted Ampicillin!”

“We all feel a little old these days, I find it’s more about the mileage not so much the years…!” said the Microbiologist.

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