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Soil Bacteria Show High Resistance to Antibiotics
Miraba writes "Microbiologists have found that soil-dwelling bacteria are highly resistant to antibiotics, even ones that they've never been exposed to before. While this information suggests that superbugs could arise from these bacteria, it also provides the opportunity for testing new techniques in drug development for the future."
I am not really surprised that soil bacteria are incredibly hardy. Remember that Bacillus anthracis (or Anthrax) is a bacterium that is endemic to soil. It is an incredibly hardy bacterium that can last as a spore in the right conditions for years (literally decades). Bacteria that live in the soil live in a hostile environment, to which they will develop methods of immunity. If a bacteria can live in soil, which is a hostile environment then one might guess that the same bacteria could handle the relatively "easy-to-live-in" human body. It is also interesting to note that many of our antibiotics are derivied from organisms that fight off bacterial infection. These same organims are prevalent in the soil. I am not sure what the big surprise is here?
Alligator/Crocodile blood anyone? They live in swampy places, fight even each other, and do not seem to get infections. (Well, not as easily as humans anyway ...)
Here is just one link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4155522.stm
One has to wonder if the soil-dwelling bacteria have a natural resistance to antibacterial agents, or if it evolved over the course of the last half century. We pump farm animals full of antibiotics that they don't really need, and said animals produce extraordinary amounts of solid waste full of highly diluted antibiotics and their metabolites. This waste becomes fertilizer, which means it's spread over huge surface areas where it leaches into the ground.
Could constant low-level exposure to antibiotics be responsible for the resistance?
Topic says it all. Different pH, temperature, humidity, ... Bacteria, fungi (etc) that thrive in the ground usually don't like it as much in a hot, warm and nearly neutral human body. We don't have a lot of things that work very well on fungi (heck, most of our antibiotics come from fungi), but they don't represent a large danger, simply because our insides are usually a bit too warm for them. Let's not panic too early.
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There is a touch irony here. The major justification for non-socialized medicine like that in the United States is that private enterprise will provide the economic rewards which will spur innovation in developing new drugs. However, what happens when the capitalistic system does not provide the necessary rewards?
Such is the case with new antibiotics. Typically, patients take antibiotics for a week and never consume the stuff again until the next infection arises. By contrast, drugs treating chronic conditions like excessive cholesterol are consumed daily and hence provide signficant financial rewards. As a result, American companies have abandoned the development of new antibiotics in favor of drugs treating chronic conditions.
What is the point of using superbugs in the soil to test the efficacy of new antibiotics when Americans companies are not developing new antibiotics?
Then again, in the end, we are all dead.
I instantly thought of this when I read the headline. I'm sure you've seen the studies. The ones that say that the average tap water has X-particles per million of Prozac, X-particle per million of Xanax, etc. The point being that human beings consume large amounts of medicine and then much of them gets excreted out somehow and eventually (and unfortunately) find their way into the ecosystem. Our water and probably our land. So a study like this makes me wonder (and feel free to club me over the head if this is impossible, because I'm just a programmer, not a a biologist) if it's possible that as we use more and more antibiotics on ourselves, on cows and chickens in large amounts, if at some point these don't make their way into the system and possibly help promote a more aggressive evolution of these superbugs. I would like to see a study done on that if there isn't already a definitive answer to *that* question.
I was recently considering entering graduate school, and one of the fellowships I was looking at was for a study examining very nearly this topic- the effect of antibacterial-contaminated runnoff from farms on soil and watershed bacteria, with a possible extension into effects on the digestive flora of aquatic life. I didn't take it, but it seemed like a very interesting and important subject. If it's made it into the mainstream press already, though, I would have been facing a pretty limited opportunity for publishing. I'm glad the information's out there! Maybe this wll help make clear the importance of more limited prophylactic antibiotic use.
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Could the natural resistance of soil bacteria to antibiotics result from the natural presence of antibiotics in soil?
Penicillin, the quintessential antibiotic, is derived from mold. Suppose that the molds and bacteria are battling it out in the soil, and the molds attack the bacteria with antibiotics, so then the bacteria evolve resistance to those antibiotics.
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Well I am glad that the Boston Globe, pinnacle of science that it is has deemed antibiotics to be a dead field. I would say that this cannot be more wrong. Not only are antibacterials being actively sought I have first hand knowledge of this fact. Private industry and the government have poured millions into finding vaccinations, antimicrobials, and many other biological elements of disease resistance. Your statement is wrong at best and intentionally misleading at worst. The most hilarious part is that the US is by FAR the leading country in this tpye of research. This is why everyone and their mother in the fields of immunology, microbiology, and biotechnology, wants a PhD from a US institution. This is why my boss gets at least 20 emails a week from people outside the US wanting to join our lab, despite the fact that it is very small.
As far as actual tablets, etc., go...antibiotics are usually prescribed to be taken until there are no more tablets. If you do have any meds you want to get rid of, please take them to a pharmacy - they should put it in their drug disposal bucket for no charge.
So basically once you get beyond all the mombo jumbo, what these guys are are looking to do is; find a way to develop anti-bacterial agents capable of killing microbes and their their cousins. Noble in effort but overlooks one fundamental problem. What happens when these agents start attacking the very same or similar microbs and bacteria that are essential to the growth of plants? Theres no way they can guarantee those agents will not. A disaster waiting to happen.
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