DailyDirt: Antibiotic Resistance Is (Not) Futile...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Jun 7th 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

With the news that a "superbug" resistant to an antibiotic of last resort was found in the US, there's a bit of concern that medicine could regress significantly in the face of uncontrollable bacteria. We've had antibiotic drugs for about 70 years now, and we've grown accustomed to the effectiveness of these drugs. Hopefully, we can stay ahead of drug-resistant microbes with new pharmaceuticals or phage therapy.

Antibiotic resistance sounds like a new problem, but ancient microbes have been found with genes that make them resistant to modern drugs. DNA from 30,000-year-old permafrost shows that there were "superbugs" well before we even discovered antibiotic compounds. [url]
Waste water from various sources can obviously cause antibiotic-resistant bacteria to emerge. Heavy metal contamination in waste water may be a contributing factor, not just waste from residential sewage systems. [url]
If you're looking for a hand sanitizer that doesn't irritate your skin, try some quaternary ammonium salt formulations. Sure, you could use alcohol-based lotions or diluted chlorine solutions, but those ingredients can dry out your skin if you use them a lot. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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Filed Under: antibiotics, bacteria, bacteriophages, biotech, drug discovery, health, medicine, microbes, phage therapy, pharmaceuticals, superbugs

12 Comments

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Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 7 Jun 2016 @ 5:26pm

Antibiotics Overuse
There are many sources of misuse of antibiotics:
- Large amounts are fed to perfectly healthy farm animals, just to fatten them up. This needs to stop.
- People often pressure doctors into pointlessly giving them antibiotics for viral infections, or even no infections at all.
- Even when antibiotics are correctly prescribed, people sometimes stop taking them when they feel better, rather than finishing the prescribed course. This lets the bugs escape and develop immunity.
Let’s face it, given the potential consequences for public health, climate change is a minor issue compared to this.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Jun 2016 @ 5:38pm
  
  Re: Antibiotics Overuse
  You are silly, silly, silly. Anthropogenic Climate Change IS the cause of antibiotic overuse, and it's the cause of acne and it's the cause of your backyard looking like a desert and it's the cause of increasing car accidents and the cause of an increasing sense of futility for the future (now that Obama is stockpiling more nukes to offset any global cooling or warming effects).
  
  So Anthropogenic Climate Change is the MAJOR, MAJOR, MAJOR world problem. It is the cause of all of our problems.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 7 Jun 2016 @ 9:09pm
    
    Re: Re: Antibiotics Overuse
    Hey now, I can believe in world ending plagues and world ending heat alike, can't I?
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    - Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2016 @ 1:50am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Antibiotics Overuse
      Nah, all world ending events have their genesys in Anthropogenic Climate Change. This is The Truth accordingly to International Panel on Clumsy Conclusions.
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      - Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2016 @ 6:38am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Antibiotics Overuse
        Well, I guess that proves climate change is a hoax then.
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        Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2016 @ 6:21pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Antibiotics Overuse
        Nah, I can live with Climate Change. It's the complete idiocy around Anthropogenic Climate Change that galls.So little actual evidence and too much modelling - it is so like looking at chicken entrails for a vision of the future.
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- Anonymous Blowhard, 7 Jun 2016 @ 9:13pm
  
  Re: Antibiotics Overuse
  I got an infection and went to the hospital recently. They gave me an antibiotic that really shouldn't be a first choice but it's known to be effective for the infection I had. But you know what? I don't want to spend three weeks while they experiment with all the other antibiotics first. I can't spend the next three weeks in bed instead of at work. I don't want to have a much worse infection three weeks from now that kills me because three weeks later nothing will help anymore. Antibiotics are preventative. Anyone who's been hit by a serious bacterial infection because their immune system was weakened by a viral infection are going to want antibiotics so that doesn't happen again. It isn't always as straighforward as people make it out to be. There needs to be continual development of antibiotics just like the flu vaccine that has to be redeveloped every year. Ideally you don't want to give them out like candy but in practice nobody can predict who the unlucky person that gets a secondary infection or doesn't respond to the first line antibiotic will be and nobody wants to be that person.
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  - Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 7 Jun 2016 @ 11:41pm
    
    Re: because three weeks later nothing will help anymore
    And a few years from now that shortens to two weeks, then one week ...
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    - Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2016 @ 1:53am
      
      Re: Re: because three weeks later nothing will help anymore
      As President Henry Hayes puts it, "It'll never happen!"
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  - JoeCool (profile), 8 Jun 2016 @ 4:45pm
    
    Re: Re: Antibiotics Overuse
    Sooooo, let me get this straight. You have an infection that required a hospital visit and might put you in bed for three weeks... and you WANT to go to work and spread it around. Thanks. I'm sure your coworkers appreciate that.
    
    This is a big problem in schools as well. Can't have the little snowflake miss a single day of school - no matter how many other snowflakes wind up catching it.
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Pixelation, 7 Jun 2016 @ 7:47pm

"If you're looking for a hand sanitizer that doesn't irritate your skin..." fire is right out.
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JonK (profile), 17 Jun 2016 @ 10:57pm

Bacteriophage
Antibiotics are good because they can be patented by pharma. Bacteriophages are bad because are naturally occurring and can't be patented, even though their job in life is to kill bacteria. At one time parts of Europe & Asia used bacteriophages (note that this site doesn't even consider this to be a word!) control bacteria, but they have been educated by pharma to only use commercial products.

Recently the FDA has recognized bacteriophages as relevant to fighting bacteria:
"Intralytix’s ListShield™, the first phage product approved by the FDA as a food additive, targets Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat meat and poultry (e.g., deli meats and frankfurters).7 The microbe, which also contaminates dairy products and raw produce, grows even in refrigerated foods and causes a serious infection called listeriosis with a fatality rate of about 20%" quote from http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a48/
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