"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."

Comments

Virus vs antibiotics

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Virus vs antibiotics

[KDan]

They don't know whether it's a virus yet (according to most of the accounts I've read, findable on Google News).

Daniel

The flu/pneumonia and anti-biotics

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The flu/pneumonia and anti-biotics

[X-rated Ouroboros]

please do not use anti-biotic soap or any of those kinds of products.

Not to imply that the AC made this mistake, but don't confuse "Anti-Bacterial" with "Anti-Biotic". Soap is naturally antibacterial, so having this on the label is right up there with selling water by trumping up the fact that it's wet. BUT, one manufacturer does it, so they all do it...
Oh, the best part is that the mechanical action of washing your hands is what does most of the work in sanitizing your hands, soap can actually make you MORE susceptible to illness by removing a variety of products your skin exudes onto its surface to combat infection (membrane lysing ribozymes and the like) and drying the skin.

The main abusers of antibiotics are livestock industries, though, not poorly informed doctors and irresponsible patients. Just about every animal is given astounding amounts of antibiotics but not so much for their disease fighting effects (in fact, certain antibiotic classes have been so abused that there are bacterial strains that can use them as FOOD). Someone noticed that animals given antibiotics gained weight more rapidly and reached a higher average weight overall than similarly treated animals that were not given the antibiotics. At first it was thought "oh, it's just because they're more healthy" but, in fact, the antibiotics themselves were causing the animals to bulk up, as proven by the fact that many of the antibiotics still given to livestock are no longer effective as antibiotics (go go evolution) yet the animals still bring more meat to market in less time.

So, why get upset about argindustrialists overusing admittedly ineffective antibiotics? Because they also do still give the animals doses of currently effective antibiotics... and I don't expect Frank the Farmhand to draw the distinction between the two, so we find abuses of the newer, still effective, antibiotics simply because of the conditioning to overdose the animals.

The thing that bothers me most about the general availability of antibiotics is that, while Carla the Crackwhore is only destroying her life, Henry the Hypochondriac is busily breeding the new strains of this, that, and/or the other that may just spread around the world one day and kill us all. Tuberculosis is already a growing problem. Post operative infection (by antibiotic/antiviral resistant strains, of course) is a major player in hospital deaths these days. It is my opinion that antibiotics should be controlled with handling restrictions silimar to Schedule I, Class A drugs... as they pose a greater threat to more people than heroin ever has.

solving antibiotic resistance is pretty simple

[g4dget]

If we only used antibiotics in humans, only when they are clearly warranted (dangerous infection that is plausibly of bacterial origin), and with proper isolation of the patients, there would probably not be enough evolutionary pressure on bacteria to develop resistance.

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.

Re:Good

[VendingMenace]

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 :)