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Antibiotic Resistant Staph Infections
LinuxGeek8 writes "There's a news update on a previous article about the first case of antibiotic resistant staph infections. The woman who has the infection is being kept up to 6 months in an isolation room. She is taking an antibiotic that is working, after many others did not.
"In the scheme of public health threats, this has to rank close to the top," David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, said of antibiotic resistance."
For all you pathology people, is this a common method for bugs, or is it limited to a few families?
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
Has the bacteria really developed a resistance? Or have all the non-resistive bacteria died off and now only resistive bacteria remain?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Well, from science fiction land I'm looking forward to nanotechnology to save the day on this one. Hopefully about the time everything under the sun becomes resistent to antibiotics we will have microscopic robots running through our blood stream wiping out invaders.
... but we are going to machines sooner or later .. this sounds like a good place to start.
Does that mean we will be cyborgs? Kind of I guess
I wonder how much it will cost and how much control software companies will have over us then?
There are many strains of antibiotic resitant bugs out there.
I used to work in a hospital and we had a lot of patients with MRSA (Multiple Resistance to Strains of Antibiotics) related issues. These patients were kept isolated and treated until the MRSA infection was cleared then they could be operated on.
Quite often these bugs not dangerous until a person gets sick then they can be fatal.
This is why people should not use antibiotics for viral infections (such as the common cold) and why if you do have to use anti-biotics you should take all the pills as prescribed until they are done.
More recently I had a positive reaction to a TB test and am on INH (Isoniazid), which makes me feel like crud. I'm 12 days into it with 6-9 months to go.
Same plan as standard penecillin treatment, take it all, to prevent drug resistent strains.
You can probably thank all those ranchers who load up their cattle, pigs and chickens with with antibiotics before bringing them to market, as those which don't break down get stay in the meat and enter your body. Nothing like a good training ground for weeking out the weaker strains of disease.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That we are getting soft. All these new products that have anti-bactereal stuff in them aren't helping us, in the long run anyway. It's sad when you see kids afraid of dirt, or people who have to wipe down every little thing before they feel it's clean. Yes, I'm wash myself.. but I don't feel the need to buy every product that 'Kills 99.9% of germs FAST!' I rarely kid a cold, and when I do my body fights it off without the use of twenty different products. Tylenol, and some good chicken soup are all I need. And yet they say the flu is getting worse by the year. We're soft, we need to toughen up. Go play in the mud.
There is no spork.
No. This is the result of people "self-medicating". When a doctor prescribes medication for 6 weeks, if you feel better after 4 weeks, there are still bacteria in your system. The next two weeks work on killing them. If you don't kill all of them, the stronger ones that survived will evolve to be immune to the medication (gross oversimplification). When they spread to someone else, who also doesn't finish the course of meds, they will become more medication-resistant. And this is the reason we have drug-resistant bacteria.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
This spectre of super-bacteria (another writer correctly notes that antibiotics have nothing to do with viral infections) has been over-hyped by the press. There have been occasional examples of astonishingly resistant variations on common bacteria, but almost all have arisen in hospital settings with other complications present. They aren't whipping through the community, in other words. There are also special interests, such as the anti-antibiotics in animal feed people (a cause I tend to believe in), which have disingenuously used the problem to boost their cause, lacking any causal connection.
:) Actually, I minored in biology and immunology, FWIW.
There is good evidence anitbiotics are overprescribed and, much worse, misused by the public (always always finish your course of antibiotic correctly, the last mile really is important even though you may feel fine -- it sounds preachy but it's true). But this is a different issue; the super-bacteria appear in hospital setting where doctors are doing their utmost to fight infection. Vancomycin is still pretty nuclear stuff.
I wish I had a good cite handy, but I can't dredge one up offhand; do take a look if you're interested, at NIH and CDC for starters. IMHO the superbacteria are kind of like the killer bees, long heralded but never quite arriving in force. I don't mean to make light of the potential trouble; it's just not here yet, and won't for a while, and it pales in contrast to staggering public health problems we have like HIV and smoking and unaffordable prescriptions and even West Nile virus. When you hear reports in terms of infections per 100,000 people, as opposed to isolated case studies, take heed. For now it merely makes for good copy, over and over.
"I'm not a doctor but I play one onlin."
I think the main problem with infections and diseases becoming more resistant to treatment lies partly in a lot of people failing to use the medicine for the required amount of time. I had a skin fungus that kept coming back because everytime I cound't see it anymore, I would quit spraying the medicine on it. After a few times of this, the medicine was no longer effective and I had to get some much stronger (and much more costly) medicine to combat the problem. Using antibiotics for a short while until the problem is apparently gone and then stopping, may allow whatever it is that is being treated to adapt to the treatments. Then it gets spread to someone else and the process repeats itself until eventually, we have no way to stop even common ailments.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Amen. I've actually gotten to the point where I get angry when I hear my mother-in-law tell my wife to go get some antibiotics because she has a cold. I've tried calmly explaining to her that antibiotics don't do anything to help a cold, but she's so used to years of doctors prescribing them for such that she can't get over it.
I routinely suffer from sinusitis twice a year (when I turn on the heat and when I turn on the AC), so getting rid of infections is a big deal for me. I am not a doctor, but for the past couple years I've managed to completely avoid antibiotics. Instead, I take Echinacea and Goldenseal three times a day until the infection goes away. I've found that it's usually just about as effective as antibiotics, and since it's still my body that's doing all the work, there's no added fear of adaptation. Of course, this remedy wouldn't work if my immune system were in really bad shape.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Not only is this not the first time, but antibiotic-resistant strains are already resisting brand new classes of antibiotics designed to beat them when all others fail.
:-|
All I'm sayin' is that I'm funneling down the vitamin C like Pez.
Attibution of evolutionary cause is dubious at best. Since evolutionary biology is almost alway based on preexisting correlation rather than comtrolled experimentation, it is not possible to say where the resistance plasmids arose.
Vancomycin resistant S. aureus has been isolated in areas outside the US where it has been ascribed http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol3no3/mcdonald.htDon't believe the nonsense, unless you hear it from me directly.
Along with extremely high antibiotic usage in the meat industry, there's also anti-bacterial soaps, drug-hoarding of precriptions, not finishing a prescription, and the hospital setting itself, that provides a wonderfull proving ground for infections.
Some friends of mine work in medicine, and this is a big topic for them. And us soon, I guess.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
--long time ago I had an SA infection, it is TRULY sucky, incredibly hard to get rid of. took me six months or so to beat it. At the time I was put on erythomycin (sp).
With that said, past few years been using colloidal silver on external wounds/infections, works quite well. I was skeptical at first until I tried it. Still using it when needed. Much better than any store bought/prescription antibio cream I ever tried. The only bummer is, it's very inexpensive. You can make it yourself easily or buy it cheaply pre-made, variety of places. People have this ingrained almost religious belief that stuff has to cost a lot of money and come from the medical deity to be effective. (Almost like the almost religious belief that software has to come from an expensive closed source place to be any good). You don't get that "full" satisfaction of paying mucho dinero for it so you know it'll work, like big pharmco products.
Yes, I know there are some issues with taking it orally by the 55 gallon drum, I'm not recommending that at all, but for some reason those silver particles will sure kill the cooties. No idea if effective or not on SA, but given that the medcos are stumped, well????
Not to be construed as medical advice, closed track, illegal where void and like that there.
I had a friend die of bacterial endocarditis. She was 29 years old, and she thought she just had a very bad flu until her left arm went numb. By the time she got to the hospital, she was dead. It's shocking and it happens fast. I saw her a week before and she was fine.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
In particular one thing I remember was that for some types of phage, you had to feed them, I think raw meat was a good choice. The viruses actually ate the meat. Phages have the advantage of being as adaptable as the bacteria however.
What about nanotech? I wonder if by the point that antibiotic resistant bacteria becomes a problem whether we'll have sufficiently advanced nanotechnology to make our own killer molecules.
Unfortunately, bacteria can become resistant to bacteriophages as well. Occasionally a bacteria has a mutation in the receptor protein that the phage normally binds to during infection. Still, if I had a vancomycin resistant infection, I'd want to give phage treatment a try...
There is even recent research that even suggests that children exposed to pets (and the inherent uncleanlyness) have lower incidence of asthma and allergies down the road.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Don't be an idiot. Where's the evidence (real or anecdotal) that the average guy who doesn't finish his antibiotics says to himself, "Well, golly, since evolution is just atheist propoganda, there is no reason for me to fear antibiotic resistance developing in bacteria--THEREFORE, I will now stop taking my antibiotic regime."
Don't be stupid.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Sometimes this works backwards, but I used to have some really bad allergies to animals: cat fur, feathers, etc.
After toughing it out in clean fresh air, coupled with visits to the chickens in the barn, etc, most of my animal allergies went away. I was still allergic to cats, but got rid of that after we got three of the shedding creatures.
In reverse cases, sometimes the allergies chip away at the immune system, causing gradually increasing sickness. But in most cases I've heard of, low exposure over time builds tolerence.
*Note: That's low exposure, stuffing a kid with allergies in a house of 50 cats is probably not recommended in the short run...
Citation please? I find this incredibly hard to believe. Not that anti-biotics could have some effect, but that a viral infection can undo the vast differences between eucaryotic and procayotic metabolism. My molecular biologist friends think that that idea is utter horsehit.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
(Completely agree with parent post, minor correction, then rant)
MRSA actually means Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus.
Now we have VRSA. Vancomycin Resistant Staphyloccocus Aureus.
There are no "wonder drugs" in the pipeline. We're reaching the end of the road for antibiotics. It won't be sudden, but it will happen.
Many diseases we currently think of as relatively trivial are going to become real killers again. Millions of people are going to die.
It won't be the young, fit and healthy as much as the very young and the very old.
But let's keep feeding the antibiotics to farm animals. It makes them more profitable. Got a slight viral cold? Demand antibiotics. It's your right.
It's the tragedy of the commons again.
Crazy question for microbiologists: Is it possible that resistance to a specific antibiotic costs an organism enough that it could no longer out-compete it's non-resistant cousins? Would it be worth infecting someone who has a resistant strain with a non-resistant strain in the hope that the non-resistant one will 'win'? Then, (if the patient still lives), treat that with antibiotics?
Or are you going to get so much genetic transfer that it's worse than dangerous?
one inmportant thing to know is that it is not good for you to use soap on your body every time you shower.
:)
you should actually use it more like twice a week. (a full body lather and scrub that is) even then it may be too much.
and you should rarely use harsh soaps on your face. I ahve a friend who is always buying "anti-oil this" and other crap products and special soaps for her face. She claims that she needs them because she has really oily skin. and that she needs to wash with it every day. She washes her face in the morning - and before she goes to bed. I told her that the reason she is so oily is because she is using that crap. That what happens is the soaps wash off the natural oils and bacteria that your skin is *supposed* to have on it. But since she uses this toxic stripping soap on her face all the time - it causes her skin to over oil in attempts to compensate. The only time she should actually use soap on her face and whole body is when its actually dirty.
For 99% of the time you can use a *hot* shower and a *hot* washcloth on your face and skin. This will get rid of most anything. you dont need to use soap on your face and body every time you get wet. its bad for you. the *only* reason they tell you to do this is to get you to buy worthless products.
The cosmetics industry is a sham. Those designer shampoo (hence the name) products you buy use about 3 cents worth of the standard detergent Sodium Lauryle Sulfate. (which some people think cuases cancer - I have no idea if it does, I just know it gives me dandruff so i stay away from it)
All the other ingredients in shampoos and conditioner are mostly garbage...
Anyway - the point is that you have bacteria on your skin that your body *needs* and you should not use soap very often. Just use hot steaming wash clothes to wash your face.
I have perfect skin, no oil and never any zits, and no BO. I almost never use soap. I use soap when I am actually DIRTY - like after paintball for example.
The bacteria on your skin and the oils you produce will typically be in balance - unless you are doing activities that cause a lot of sweating in a dirty environment - or you dont shower every single day - then you dont need soap.
(but you should wash your hands with soap - even though the crappy detergents ruin your skin)
And you should avoid antibiotics like the plague - unless you actually have the plague, then they are a good thing (TM)
(seriously - take these as rarely as ever possible)
Aside from increasing awareness of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB), and increasing intervention efforts, the big questions that should elicit the most worry are:
1.) whether intervention, by diminishing use of antibiotics will be _effective_?
2.) And what is the timescale in which we'll see our intervention efforts start to work?
Regarding 2., I mean to ask, how long will it take before the ARB begin to go away and be replaced by normal bacteria? If it's quick, then we should not be so worried. And that would be a silver lining for those who are thinking of tackling this problem. If it takes a very long time, then we should worry more.
And even more importantly, for the long-term planning people
3.) Once ARB have been reduced in bacterial populations, how easy is it for bacteria to acquire resistance again?
For answering 3., unfortunately, it's probably _not_ the same as bacteria acquiring resistance for the first time. From the molecular biology of antibiotics and bacteria, we know some antibiotic resistance genes are placed onto plasmids. Plasmids are separate from the bacteria. They are small, modular pieces of DNA that can encode resistance. Once you develop resistance, you can keep or pass these plasmids around until needed. Even if resistant bacteria die, the plasmids may still remain in existence. Thus the molecular biology of bacteria tells us we should consider these things to fully understand our intervention efforts.
We are uncertain, I believe, of the evolutionary time scales of all these events. (except for the one telling us how long it takes for antibiotic resistance to develop!)
And the reason behind THAT is that it's better for the INDIVIDUAL to consume a lot of antibiotics, even while it's bad in the long term for society. So who's going to risk losing their life to infection in order to prevent antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria from evolving? It sure as hell won't be me, thank you very much.
I don't know about this guy's compost pile, but I can tell you from my various attempts to sprout grapefruit seeds, that they do indeed rot (quite nastily) if conditions are too wet and the seed "drowns". OTOH, *NO* seed decomposes so long as it is still alive. So there's nothing unique about grapefruit seeds in this respect.
However, you might look into apple seeds. When I was a kid, I discovered that a peeled and crushed apple seed held against a canker sore for 10 minutes would cause very rapid healing in 90% of cases. Maybe a cyanide compound of some sort, killing a specific pathogen, I dunno (never bothered to pursue it, no idea if anyone's researched it).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I and many others have cured ourselves without antibiotics, and I want to tell you how. This by no means qualifies as official medical information, it's just what happened.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and this is not a scientific analysis. This is just my story. It worked for me. If you have staph you should seek medical attention immediately. It's no joke, and even the doctors may not be able to help you.
OK, if you have a weak stomach, stop reading now.
First I should explain how staph attacks you, typically. Usually what happens is that you get a nick on your lower leg, and it just won't heal. Soon you have a festering infection which grows rapidly. It's amazingly efficient and agressive. It eats a sizable hole in your leg, and then starts to spread. You start getting pimples on other parts of your body which quickly grow and soon your are covered with round, dime or quarter-sized oozing festering holes. It's pretty horrifying. If you don't do something about it, you will end up with serious problems.
I was infected for a couple of months, but I recovered without antibiotics, and many others have by using similar techniques. I have thought about the whole experience a lot, and I think I can identify the core elements of a successful staph cure. These elements can be divided into two main categories. First, you must have some kind of internal defense to prevent the spread of the staph through the bloodstream and the intercellular fluid. In the usual cure this is done by antibiotics, but these are losing their effectiveness. But fortunately your body comes equipped with an immune system for this purpose, but you must do everything you can to strengthen it and give it the advantage over the bacteria. Secondly, you must have some sort of external attack. This is the really horrible part. The staph burrows under the dead flesh it kills, making it extremely difficult to attack from the outside.
Internal Defense
External attack
This can be divided into two phases. In the first phase, the staph colony is expanding into the flesh around it, and your attack must be very aggressive. In the second phase, your body has isolated the colony and built a membranous wall around it. Then the treatment must be very gentle.
Phase one; Expanders:
During this phase, I think the wounds should be left open. This is to encourage them to ooze pus, which is actually a good thing because it establishes an outward flow of fluid and slows the staph down. The objective of this phase is to slow the growth of the colony enough for your body to build a membranous wall around it, isolating the infection from the intercellular fluid and allowing the healing process to begin.
Phase 2; Contractors:
You will know you have entered this phase when you stop finding so much dead flesh, and the colony slows its growth. At this point you build a wall around the infection, and within a couple of days the remaining dead flesh outside the wall should come off easily, without extensive scrubbing. Now you must change your approach:
Gradually the wound will begin to shrink. You must stick with the treatment rigorously and stick to the diet mercelessly. The cases that go on and on are the ones where the person simply cannot force themself to avoid sugar, alcohol and cigarettes, and just keep getting new infections.
Also, a note about clenliness. It's really important. You must clean and disinfect your entire environment completely all the time, especially your clothes and bedding. Do lots of laundry, take lots of showers, use chlorine liberally.
Well, that about covers it. After two months of this horrible daily torture, I finally got a grip on my sugar consumption, cured my last big sore, and recovered. I have big scars on my legs to tell the tale, but I'm actually grateful for the experience. It builds a hell of a lot of will power, which is useful stuff.
Good luck, and may the Force be with you.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
I remember reading an article about a study where scientists took samles from the dorm rooms of messy college students and also from homes which were cleaned often with anti-bacterial cleaners. There were more germs in the college dwellings, but the germs found in the houses cleaned with anti-bacterial cleaners were much more dangerous. I don't remember the exact conclusions drawn, but there was definitely a link between the anti-bacterial cleaners and the dangerous germs.
1. From time to time, something known as Golden
Staph is reportedly found in our hospitals,
and it closes any operating theatres it's
been found in...
2. There's a double standard of informing people
who might be working around/with those known
to have/carry golden staph, &/or communicable
diseases:
- police dispatchers alert attending officers
that suspects are known to carry (unspeci-
fied) communicable diseases, but
- health care professionals (who work with
similar disease carriers) are not told, ie
officially
Different ministries / gov't dep'ts,
different needs/rights to know...
Go figure! Or better: go improve things!
You don't need anti-bacterial soap to cleanse yourself of bacteria. Normal soap makes your skin SLIPPERY enough that a good rinse sends all the bacteria down the drain. Most research indicates that using any anti-bacterial products in your home is unneccessary. Normal soap and detergent will keep you and your home clean.
Anti-bacterial products can produce bacteria that are resitant to the anti-bacterial ingredient.
It has also been shown that kids that grow up in sterile homes (mom or dad use lots of anti-bacterial soap everywhere, every day) tend to get more infections once they get to school age as their immune system hasn't had to develop resistance to normal environmental bacteria (like you find at school).
Anarchists never rule
No offense, but I trust my dermatologist friend (who has been to specialist school) much more than the anecdotal evidence of an online web forum. He recommends soap and water daily.
I think bacteriophages need bacteria to reproduce in. The meat stock is a culture for the bacteria rather than viruses - the type of bacteria that grow on raw meat are probably the same that infect humans. Bacteriophages specifically infect bacteria. Animal cells have a different cell structure to bacteria and aren't vulnerable to bacteriophages.
I remember that the Russians were using hospital sewage as the source of bacteriophages. The sewage was contaminated with the most common patient infections.
You are correct on micro/macro.
And, it's not that it's "Against God's Plan" -- it's that it simply is conjecture that didn't happen.
The better example is the dog born with 5 legs. Some would say this could be a transitional form that if things were right could lead to a new breed of super dog. We see a dog flopping around looking embarrassed because it has a serious problem.
The main issue is that there should be tranisitional forms all around us -- and that evolution should be observed. Peppered moths are nursery stories and have little correspondance to anything. I could throw away all my yellow sheets of paper, but that wouldn't make my white paper turn into monkeys.
Mutations and diseases are not part of God's Plan. They are the result of choosing another plan.
I buy either capsules or caplets with both herbs ground up in them -- any local pharmacy here (United States). I'm not sure what country you're in, but if you are anywhere in Europe, you should be able to find something similar. While living in Germany, we even found an oral suspension for our child that worked pretty well. I haven't managed to find that here.
The most important of the herbs is probably the Echinacea, which is the immune system booster. The Goldenseal may actually increase your drainage, but is helpful in getting rid of the little nasties as your body beats them down.
The bottle I currently have contains 225 mg of Echinacea and 50 mg of Goldenseal in TWO caplets. It recommends a dosage of two caplets daily. When I'm sick, I take this dosage three times a day. Because I'm not a doctor, I don't recommend that you do this -- try smaller dosages first. I've just found that this particular dosage schedule works for me. I also have a colleague in Germany who suffered from similar problems, and she now takes a small Echinacea supplement daily -- hasn't had a problem since. However, I don't know if the body will build up a "tolerance" to this kind of usage, so I haven't tried it.
Finally, beware that Echinacea has some rather interesting side-effects for your digestive system, similar to antibiotics. I'm not sure if this is due to an intestinal reaction to the herb itself, or if it enables your body to start fighting the "good" E. Coli that live in your intestines. (I suspect the former because the herb itself does not attack the bacteria.) Every time I start taking the stuff, it takes a couple days for my digestive system to adjust, and then I'm ok after that.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?