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"Killer Flu" Emerging On Both Sides of the Pacific
mallorean writes "The spread of SARS ( Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ) worldwide is just about making the headlines. The WHO has issued an advisory. American Scientist had two very timely articles relevant to SARS in the current issue. The first is about the rapidly growing antibiotic resistance in bacterial diseases and the origin and possible sources of this resistance. The second article talks about Type A Influenza and the possibility of a world pandemic similar to the 1918 Global Flu Pandemic. The transmittable nature of SARS, the lack of epidemological information and its severe resistance to antibiotics seems tailor made to fit the scenario outlined in the second article ( it even originated in the far east and is a strain of avian flu )." Read below for a related link.
jake-in-a-box points to a New York Times article which says that the illness "has affected hundreds in China and Southeast Asia, and now spread to Vancouver, BC. It does not respond to antibiotics or antivirals and apparently nobody has fully recovered yet. Transmission appears to be via aerosol droplets - coughs, sneezes etc."
Er, the Flu is a virus, and antibiotics only work against microrganisms and bacteria, therefore it's not suprising that the flu is totally unaffected by antibiotics.
Duh.
What's the difference between this latest outbreak and any other outbreak?
These articles talk about a strain influenza virus (and then they talk about a second disease) which is spreading to dozens of countries and which has killed hundreds of people in Asia. WHO issued an advisory. The deaths are tragic, but these happenings don't seem very unusual to me. Thousands of people die from influenza every year, WHO issues advisories every year, viruses spread every year.
So how is this new disease different? I couldn't get a good sense from the articles.
Is this just hype? Perhaps now that we're on the verge of war, and many folks (at least here in the US) are scared of a biological attack. Perhaps that fear is just contributing to the hype?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
My mom died from a case of the flu that turned into pneumonia in 1995. Anti-biotics *are* relevant to flu viruses, because the flu can ofter turn into pneumonia through a weakened immune system. That is why it is so important for people to take anti-biotics sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. When the doctor gives you them please take *all* of them and please do not use anti-biotic soap or any of those kinds of products.
The CBC has a story on the cases in Canada as well.
--Dan
Instead, we feed antibiotics to livestock and hand them out to anybody who asks for them. It's not surprising that that leads to resistance. The consequence is already a lot of disease that would have been treatable otherwise, and it will likely be lots of deaths in the future. And simply researching new antibiotics won't be a solution: they'll become ineffective as quickly as the current crop; this is a race that we are losing.
If you prescribe or take antibiotics unnecessarily, or if you buy meat from animals that have been fed antibiotics, you are responsible for the deaths of others pretty much as if you put a gun to their head; it's just that you are never going to meet the people you killed.
nature is not "fighting back" any more that is was when mammals took over for reptiles after thee climate changed. Nature does not fight back, it evolves :)
Cows and pigs are not supposed eat grains and soya all the time - but it makes them grow quick and their meat is more tender & juicy (=intramuscular fat). High calory/low fieber diet can make the animals sick - the bacteria in the gut would produce a lot of acidic products that irritate/cause inflamation of the gut, resulting in indigestion, diarrhea and poor absorbtion of the feed. But if you suppress bacteria by adding antibiotics, you can feed this stuff with impunity.
Although, the antibiotic resistance may not have anything to do with this: the pathogen looks to me more like a virus, quite possibly of the influenza variety. Please remember that influenza viruses are *exceptionaly* variable, fast- mutating. They have their natural reservoir in birds (wild population and chicken as weel) and also pigs, and only infect humans when they mutate. Influenza virus needs the host to have a protease capable of activating the key virus protein. Most often these proteases are specific to the particular tissue and animal species - that is until the key virus protein eventualy mutates and a new host becames vulnerable to it.
When the mutation would happen is unpredictable and if the new influenza virus is only a cousin-relative to the common influenza virus, the neuramidinaze inhibitors may not work at all on it.
Muhammar
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
So few posts about a killer bug sweeping the globe? This could mean only one thing...
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