DailyDirt: Fighting Off Teeny Tiny Threats...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Jun 25th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The population of superbugs that are resistant to antibiotic drugs is a growing concern. If we run out of effective medicines to fight off bacterial infections, it won't be pretty. Fortunately, we might have a few more tricks up our sleeves, and hopefully, these new tactics will be tested and ready by the time our current line of antibiotics stop working. Here are just a few links on how we might save ourselves.

Bacteriophages are viruses that can infect bacteria, and phage therapy could use these viruses to combat all kinds of disease-causing microbes. Using viruses to fight bacterial infections has been widely used in Russia and other parts of eastern Europe, but engineering viruses is not quite a mature field (yet). [url]
Attacking the cell membranes of bacteria could be an effective approach to killing off antibiotic-resistant bacteria. If new drugs can selectively break down bacterial membranes, then they won't even need to enter the cells.. and no resistance can be developed. [url]
Plastics that prevent the attachment of biofilms on their surfaces could be useful in eliminating bacterial infections from common medical devices. These materials prevent bacterial growth by resisting bacterial attachment at the earliest stages, so catheters and other medical tools coated in these polymers could put an end to a large number of hospital infections. [url]

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Filed Under: antibiotics, bacteria, bacteriophages, biofilm, drug-resistant, health, infection, microbes, phage therapy, plastic

5 Comments

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Spamtrap (profile), 25 Jun 2014 @ 5:09pm

Phage therapy
Actually the process is straightforward. The particular bacteria is cultured then treated with a solution from a bacteria rich environment to find something thats eats the bacteria. The best source for finding a bacteriophage is often barnyard effluent.
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- Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2014 @ 6:36pm
  
  Re: Phage therapy
  so you put your nasty bacteria with a few billion or so DIFFERNET bacteria's, and your nasty bacteria goes away!.
  Now all you have to do is find out what one of those billion did it ! good luck with that.
  
  "then they won't even need to enter the cells.. and no resistance can be developed."
  
  fact is, no resistance needs to be developed, you just need the bacteria to mutate and evolve, and for 1 slightly more resistant on to survive long enough to reproduce, and you have resistance.
  Happens all the time, its how they work.
  
  Humans very existence relies on the existence of viruses, without them we simply would not be here.
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CK20XX (profile), 25 Jun 2014 @ 10:19pm

It's great to see a breakthrough on drug-resistant bacteria, but it's not gonna be a sure thing unless it's treated as a stopgap measure. To really beat this problem, we need to mitigate our reliance on antibiotics. Bacteria are practically designed to evolve, so anything we relentlessly pelt them with they're eventually going to adapt and become immune to, and then we'll be right back where we started.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Jun 2014 @ 1:47pm

More fungus is good
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-06-team-unearths-secret-weapon-antibiotic.html
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Bill Riedel, 26 Jun 2014 @ 4:44pm

Phage therapy
Lytic phages love bacteria, including superbugs, to deaths or to put it another way, to the right lytic phage an antibiotic-resistant superbug is just another opportunity to multiply and finally antibiotic-resistant superbugs exist only for folk who can't get their minds past antibiotics.
The mokita or paradox of the antibiotic-resistant superbug problem is that we have known how to treat some, perhaps even most, antibiotic-resistant superbug infections since before antibiotics have been used to treat bacterial infections. A recent BBC interview on phage therapy can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p015cdyn/Health_Check_Bacteriophages/ -. (For other videos in English, French and German google �phage therapy� in video mode).
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