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Possible Antibiotic for MRSA Superbug
darkmeridian writes "Merck has discovered a possible treatment for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a virulent superbug resistant to many current antibiotics. The new compound, platensimycin, was found in a sample of South African soil and works by preventing the bacteria from assembling fatty acids into its cell membrane. This mechanism of action is novel among antibiotics, most of which currently block DNA assembly or protein assembly. Of course, this product still has to undergo human testing, but apparently looks promising."
Oh well... I guess it's good that they may actually get some treatment options for this disease. It sounds horrible. According to http://citypaper.net/articles/2005-03-03/cb2.shtm
So if some stranger in the supermarket asks you to look at their rash and wonders if it's contagious... don't hesitate to punch them. Or maybe you guys don't live in quite the redneck neighborhood that I do...
Funnypics
It's immoral to test on humans and it should be banned. Can't they use guinea pigs instead? That's what they were invented for.
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Guinea_pig (karma whoring link)
I'll probably be modded down for this...
"The new compound, platensimycin, was found in a sample of South African soil and works by preventing the bacteria from assembling fatty acids into its cell membrane."
Just one more reason for us to not destroy our environment.
...platensimycin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or PRSA, a virulent superbug.
Of course, a new antibiotic is never the final word in the war on bacteria. The introduction of this new antibiotic, platensimycin, provides yet another opportunity for bacteria to mutate and to develop defenses against it. Eventually, the bacteria will become resistant to platensimycin.
What is not known is whether we can continuously develop new antibiotics that kill new antibiotic-resistant strains of germs and that will not kill human cells. As each successive generation of new antibiotics bombards the bacteria and as it adapts to the new medicines, will the bacteria become so powerful that it cannot be killed?
When will Washington ban the feeding of antibiotics to cattle? I am referring to the use of antibiotics as a food supplement. It is insane.
this could be huge.
MRSA and other bacteria are increasingly becoming resistant to this beta-lactam drugs and or these dna inhibiting drugs. MRSA is a huge problem in hospital. A big reason for nosocomial infections.
Many people dont realize how bad this bacteria can be. None of the other drug families cover this methicillin resitant organism. Most people get Vitamin L (levaquin) or the z-pax, etc.
There is 1 drug which is reserved for MRSA which is vancomycin. I've heard rumors that some are developing resistance to this drug since a lot of docs are giving it to patients now.
The first humans to start using this drug will probably take half of the prescribed course and stop as soon as they're feeling better, thus helping to evolve a new generation of superbug resistant to this 'superantibiotic'
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
This post is a little too late. The cure for MRSA is vancomycin, which you'll find in every hospital everywhere. Nowadays, in some areas, up to 70% of s. aureus is resistant to methicillin, and vanco is used impirically. 10 years from now everything will be MRSA. That's no problem... it's VRSA that you've got to worry about.
Whilst your comment seems to be factually correct, more people will read it and take it seriously if you supply a source:
:)
"Vancomycin and teicoplanin are glycopeptide antibiotics used to treat MRSA infections."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRSA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancomycin
Plus you get some free karma for doing it. Always works!
I'll probably be modded down for this...
An article in the most recent issue of Nature discusses this new antibiotic in more detail - the process by which it was discovered, its nature etc. The article however ends with a discussion that the chances of this antibiotic making it to the market is pretty low. First of all, it has to be tested to make sure it is stable (this apparently is a concern that has already risen in animal tests of the new antibiotic) and non-toxic to humans. However, even if the technical problems are resolved, financial problems - antibiotics are simply not profitable for pharmaceutical companies - may kill it. The reasons for the financial problems apply to antibiotics in general:
- It is likely that this antibiotic if released into common use will "meet the fate of its predecessors" as bacteria rapidly require resistance to it. So the time span when it will under heavy demand will be short.
- Regulatory hurdles. "the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not have clear guidelines for approving new antibiotics" meaning the process is even more long and tedious than for normal drugs.
- Antibiotics are only used for sparingly and only for a week or two.
A quote:
But "the next steps are fraught with danger", warns microbiologist Carl Nathan of Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York. "The obstacles are truly formidable."
Viagara was an accident. They were testing phosphodiesterase inhibitors as a therapy for keeping heart vessels open. It didn't work so well, but they discovered the unexpected side effect of opening vessels in the penis when the subjects were reluctant to return their unused pills.
Many flock to Africa to eat soil. Contract Malaria.
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
I used to work in a residential facility for disabled children with severe/profound mental retardation, and those who had the hardest time were the ones that contracted MRSA. Because these kids had such significant physical problems, they were often in and out of hospitals and would contract the virus while admitted there. Besides the scary fact that this bug is prevalent in hospitals of all places, it is so dangerous and contageous to children that those who contract it have to be kept in isolation.
Every day I would walk by the isolation ward and look in, just to let the kids know that someone was concerned for them. These children already had the odds stacked against them, and to top it off with the fact those who attended to them had to avoid all physical contact cut me to the heart. How sad is it to be a kid who can never be hugged, having to live without anyone touching them?
If someone can isolate and develop an antibiotic that can cure MRSA, I'll be one of the first in line to shake their hand.
Get over yourself.
And just how did this thing become drug resistant in the first place?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's called Vancomycin, and it's been around for a while. If the pharmacy doesn't stock that, Teicoplanin will also work. Quite honestly, the MRSA is not exactly a superbug. For the most part, these organisms are caught in the hospital - proper handwashing and isolation should prevent most people from evening catching these bugs. The real "superbug" these days is Vancomycin Insensitive Staph Aureus (VISA) - organisms that require concentrations of vancomycin that come close to causing neprotoxicity (kidneys) and ototoxicity (ears) and who knows what else.
It seems to me if your flesh is being eaten away by an unstoppable bacteria, you're going to be pretty willing to test out a new antibiotic. Sometimes the FDA clinical trials process just isn't sensible.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Of course, a person could just inhale nitric oxide, which is bactericidal to VRE, MRSA, M. Tuberculosis, etc.
There are many fine folks working at Merck. Unfortunately it is also obvious there are persons and practices, in research and management, that have compromised both good science and public health.
Until there is a full accounting, and a house-cleaning, at Merck, I strongly urge everyone to regard statements from Merck with a greater degree of skepticism that they would regard other material from like businesses. Merck has an agenda, and that agenda has apparently not been one of honesty or integrity of late.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
...if you're using it to treat diarrhea. Seriously! If you look up the molecule's structure, you'll be astonished at the sheer SIZE of that thing. Works great to wipe out flora in the GI without passing into the bloodstream. This is also an advantage of Vanco as an IV drug, as in those cases you typically do not want to wipe out the patient's GI flora. That could lead to other problems...
After learning about this fruit and its many documented benefits, I bought into the company that brought it to the market in the US.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
For more information from PubMed on the mangosteen fruit and its benefits, see these articles at PubMed via NIH.gov. Or, go to my website.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I, for one, hail our new Methicillin-resistant overlords!
we know that "they" don't have to be too strict about human testing, so expect this to hit the market ... tomorrow.
http://www.harpers.org/OutOfControl.html
Staphylococcus aureus is very common, as a matter of fact, EVERYBODY has it. It's what is known as "normal flora", in other words, it's part of the normal coating of microbes we all carry on our skin. Generally, it's not a problem, but when someone is sick, and thier immune system is already compromised in some way, it can be dangerous. VRE, or Vancomycin Resistnant Enterococci is in the same category... normal flora that has become resistant to antibiotics. Fortunately, these bacteria are both relatively benign; They are the "complications" of other diseases... if someone dies from MRSA or VRE, they probably had one foot in the grave anyway.
Not to put a monkey wrench into things, but a substantial proportion of the people reading this are colonized with Staph aureus, and depending upon what part of the world you hail from and your recent medical history, there's a good chance that it's MRSA. If you know a friendly microbiologist, get them to swab your nose. You'd be surprised.
= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1653404 7&query_hl=6&itool=pubmed_docsum/
= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1644711 0&query_hl=9&itool=pubmed_docsum/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
MRSA is typically resistant to beta-lactam antibiotics, including penicillins and cephalosporins. Just because it's resistant does not mean that it's going to eat away at your flesh. Methicillin sensitive strains will do that just as happily, particularly if they produce leukocidins (eg: MRSA strain USA300).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
Calling vancomycin a cure for MRSA is exceedingly short sighted. VRSA/VISA (the I stands for intermediate, not insensitive), is becoming increasingly common in some regions. Topical agents, such as mupirocin or chlorhexidine may help to attenuate nasal and skin carriage (groin, axilla etc), but reports of MuRSA are also beginning to surface. It's an uphill battle.
My advice? (And yes, I hold a PhD in the field). Avoid contributing to the problem. Don't suck down antibiotics every time you get the sniffles, especially if you don't have to. More importantly, if your doctor insists upon it, don't stop taking the antibiotics the moment you feel better: finish the entire course, as prescribed. Data to associate feedlot/livestock antibiotic supplements and the transmission of resistant pathogens into human populations is scant. Worry first about the factors you can control. Your children will thank you for it.
(As someone who currently has the MRSA infection) With MRSA the flesh isn't always "being eaten away". I contracted it in hospital after being 90% burnt in '98 through an electrical accident and it slowed my healing considerably, even now grazes etc. take much longer to heal, but that's pretty much it. I just have to be hygienic to avoid passing it on. Maybe my immune system was more resistant than most, I don't know. I hear these stories of the superbug and the effects it can have, so I know I'm lucky, but I for one am not keen to get this stuff tested on me, tell me when the tests are done.
!sig
How did you spell "phosphodiesterase" correctly and fail at "Viagra"?
Among these measures is to target virulence rather than the pathogen itself. The reason is that a species of pathogen can have varying virulence and you want the last virulent to win the competition for the ecological niche (human body). Ewald gives an example of a particular protein used by a bacteria to convert human lung tissue to useful food -- a protein that costs the bacteria about 5% of its budget but has huge returns. Vaccinating against this protein can let the more benign variants beat out the virulent variants for the lungs of humans, and give the human immune system the kick it needs to construct antibodies to suppress further infection.
Seastead this.
Forgive me asking, but how did you survive 90% burning? I thought there was no chance that you would survive the massive infection?
Part of this work was done by colleagues of mine at the Institute for Research into Environmental Sustainability part of Newcastle University, UK.
The BBC report on this several month old story is here!
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Clearly he was trying to get it past your spam filters.
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
This isn't newsworthy to me. I don't get viruses - I use Linux.
*ducks*
It's worth bearing in mind that of all the antibiotics that have been identified, the majority are of fungal origin. And of those which have been examined, only some twenty percent have been deemed sufficiently safe to be used therapeutically. Even some of the accepted ones can be pretty scary; one that comes to mind is vancomycin, a "last resort" antibiotic which in some cases can cause hearing loss and/or kidney failure.
You don't imagine how close you're to the truth.
The S. Aureus is a bacteria that lives on the skin and is harmless most of the time. I said "most", because the bugs is really nasty in some specific area :
- intensive care : patients aren't in good shape, and the bug tries to enter into them. (Some strains are very good at crawling along needles of perfusion)
- surgery : the few specimens that survived the disinfection may try to jump into the wound. Bones (like after an accident) are an example.of wound that aren't very well protected against infection (among other reasons : lower blood flow compared to other organs and thus harder to bring white blood cells and antibodies).
Because it lives on the skin surface they can realy easily travel from one individual to another, just by plain skin contact (think handshaking or on object that everyone touch). And because they're harmless most of the time, there are no symptoms (the carrier isn't sick) and they can travel unnoticed until they reach one critical patient.
So the only patient that is feeling realy bad is the one at the end of the chain (the one in critical care). Among the chain, there's a lot of people who aren't sick (and don't give a fuck about it) and (mostly healthy) people that may have minor skin wounds (requiring some treatement) but don't follow their treatment as they should (because they feel well).
And that's one reason why bacteria are exposed to sub-lethal doses of antibiotics, some of them surviving better, and evolution (huh... sorry... Intelligent Design) doing it's job and making better superbugs.
Note: other reasons appart from bad usage of antibiotics are :
- Moronic prescrition / Pharmaceutical over-hyping : Doctor hears that superbugs are common. Doctors hears about (=gets brainwashed by marketing departement) new superdrug that kills superbug. Doctor start prescribing superdrug for *EVERY SINGLE CASE*, even when not needed. Superbugs become Hyperbugs. repeat ad nauseam.
That's why method are developped to help determine when and what drug is needed. As a student a worked in such a lab.
- Industrial agriculture : Some huge agricultural corporation do very stupid things which all end up with environnement becoming polluted with antibiotics and resistant bacteria appearing "in the wild" due to exposition to sub-lethal doses.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
MRSA is a variant of common-or-garden Staph that is resistant to most antibiotics. It's not, however, resistant to soap and hot water.
.....
The problem is that antibiotics are being badly misused. After about three days on penicillin, with two days to go, you start feeling OK again. Now, at this point, you may be tempted to stop taking the stuff. That is the worst thing you can do. Your immune system has recovered a bit, and is now just about strong enough to fight off the bacteria. However, unless you can be sure that you have killed every last one of the germs, there is still a chance that they might breed. And the ones that survived the onslaught of penicillin are going to pass on the "double-hard bastard" gene to their own offspring. So you need to complete the course, using your own recovered immune system with penicillin as backup, in order to deal with the superbugs.
People failing to finish courses of antibiotics are costing the National Health Service {and by extension the taxpayer} money. In fact, penicillin {or the artificially-manufactured equivalent, Amoxil} isn't used so much anymore because there are resistant strains of so many bacteria. My cruel side thinks it's a shame you can't ROLLBACK a medical treatment and leave people sick if they don't complete the treatment properly
On the other side of the coin, if you keep taking penicillin for too long, your immune system will eventually stop trying so hard {and again you'll be breeding penicillin-resistant bugs}. Plus, the stuff isn't any respector of the essential bacteria in your body. Too many antibiotics passing through your system might even kill some of the essential bacteria in your septic tank, causing it to smell and making you unpopular with the neighbours.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
A lot of ignorant people are saying "MRSA is no big deal, vancomycin cures it". Well in my case there was no way that a dose of vancomycin strong enough to get MRSA out of my clavicle, scapula and humerus wasn't going to do some pretty major damage to me. There was a shortage of beds in Intensive Care as well, so it was decided to treat me with some other drug - I was so sick by that time that it's kinda patchy (such as my not remembering exactly what antibiotic cured me), but I recall being told that they were going to treat me with this stuff for 10 days, and hopefully it would work, as it was the ONLY antiobiotic besides vancomycin that my strain would respond to. I was told that if I took this medicine for 14 days it would kill me by shutting down my liver.
After 10 days I was a delightful dayglo yellow colour, but the bug had died. Meanwhile I have to live with the aftermath of septic arthritis, osteomyelitis and periperal neuritis. In practical terms this means my shoulder had the cartlidges (sp?) eaten away and the bone surfaces have an interesting "finish" where they grind together when I move my arm. The nerves that pass through my shoulder were damaged by both the infection and the antibiotic, and I have constant pain which feels kinda like a permanantly dislocating shoulder. I take a lot of oxycodone, and as a result dont crap real well. Every 6 weeks I get a nerve block which gives me a few days (typically 3 to 5) with much lower pain. Getting these injections into the brachial plexus so often carries a real risk of further infection or nerve damage though.
It's the only time I've ever got a letter from a pathologist, as when they did the tests that finally found what antibiotics would work I got a letter in red ink from them saying "See your doctor NOW as you have a LETHAL INFECTION". By that time I had acquired the delightful aroma of rotting meat - leave a raw shoulder roast out in the sun for a few weeks - that was the smell 8 inches from my nose.
I was having the wound scraped clean twice a day, with it being packed with all sorts of things to try to help the wound drain. There was a hole through my shoulder - it was possible to slide a 5mm diameter glass rod from the top of my shoulder, through the center of what used to be a synovial capsule and out the other hole in my armpit.
So don't trivialise MRSA - it's really impacted on my life, apart from nearly killing me. And don't trivialise vancomycin, unless you consider potential organ failure as trivial. MRSA and vancomycin are both very nasty stuff.
The idea per se is not that revolutionary, phages have been known and used for sesearch purposes for a long time. I suspect there is a certain fear of injecting a virus (even one that supposedly hasn't been able to infect eukariotic cell) into a human patient. It is also concievable that bacteria could acquire resistance to phages. There are some bactera that cannot be infected with any known phages.
The Wiki Article you pointed to, mentions how this therapy was used by the Soviets for many years. This makes it sound exotic and new, but from a personal point of view, growing up in the former Soviet Union I can say that there wasn't much emphasis on human life and safety. Everything was owned and operated by the state and all the research was tied somehow with politics, which probably explains why the West takes Soviet-era research with a grain of salt. There could have been a lower success rate than reported or some results could have been fudged up more so than here in the West. As it happened with genetics, the Soviets often would persue anything other than the West is doing, just for sake of being different -- see Lysenko's "vernalisation" for example.
Man WNV sucks.
Cracking neck, Cold Sweats, Nausia, Headaches, Double / Blurred Vision
I got no medical (since 1981) I been like this for a year now.
The Vision thing got better with Leutine, Lycopine, B1, Super Colon Cleanse--that $80 thing you hear on AM radio late at night, and Oil Of Oregano Straight in the mouth.
The Cold Sweats went away after 6 months.
The Headaches, and Cracking neck continue to this day.
Motrin, Asprin, Flexeril(When I can get em) and beer is the only relief!!
I hear there's some experimental WNV horse shots, I am tempted to aquire some.
Stay away from the mosquitoes is my advise. Seriously!!
To all the people saying, it won't take long for MRSA or other bacteria to get resistance to this, this is a big deal. This drug is not a derivative of earlier antibiotics. We're talking cocktail solutions and grape shot. Bacteria only have so many resources. To build a wall in one place bacteria have to take material away from some where else. Bacteria can not be resistant to everything. This is really good news.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Dear christ. No wonder you're cranky.
Your post touched a tender spot. When my eldest daughter (now 5) was born prem at 25 and a bit weeks, she was doing great for a couple of weeks (despite the hole in the heart, and brain haemorrhage common to prems), moving about and making noise in the humidicrib. Then it all changed. Two weeks into her 3.5 month stay in NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), MRSA swept the ward (14 infants). At least 3-4 infants died and half of the rest got significant infections, including our daughter.
This wasn't some backwater hospital, but one of the leading Children's hospitals in the country, and her primary consultant was the head of the department, so there wasn't a whole lot more that could be done. Overnight she went from being active to effectively immobile and mute. For the next 3+ months for her hospital stay, and her first several months at home, she rarely moved, didn't cry, and made no sound.
She was on Vancomycin, which risked her kidneys, but compared to what she faced it was the least of her problems. She was scheduled for an operation to close the hole in her heart, but she was too sick. It got to the point where she was drowning in her own fluid (you can't do any more than 100% Oxygen, with sats dropping rapidly) and they had to operate.
While they were conducting routine X-Rays and scans a couple of weeks later they found that the MRSA had attacked her skeleton, leaving her without a hip or half of her right femur, and missing half of her left hip, and had somehow caused a cyst in her brain (the haemorrhage was long gone). While the bug was beaten, she and the other infected infants were isolated from the rest of the NICU and had their own equipment and caring material. It was more than 90 days from birth before she moved out of Intensive Care, into High Dependency, and almost 120 before she came home.
Partly due to her prematurity (though mainly due to the MRSA) she has a number of issues. The high Oxygen dependency (she was drowning in her own fluid) led to deafness (only partial hearing when aided on one side only, no hearing other side) and chronic lung disease. The long term intubation and drugs meant that she had vocal cord palsy (only one half of the cords work, and barely at that). The Osteomyelitis (skeletal infection from the MRSA) means that she has a distinct shortness of one leg, a floating hip on that side (it actually feels like it is floating, resting on some scar tissue) and moderate mobility problems (needs to be aided to stand / lean, wheelchair bound), and took almost 2 years to learn to crawl and roll due to other mobility restrictions. Every time she gets a chest infection, she has to go to hospital for 2+ weeks, and when they find out she was MRSA, she goes into isolation.
While she is a happy child, going into isolation in a strange place for 2+ weeks (on Oxygen) takes its toll, especially when she gets no audio cues from her surroundings and can not walk to the window or door to look out and at least look at something different. Having been in isolation in hospital as an adult for only a few days, I can only imagine how frustrating it is for a child.
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
Not initially, but every drug eventually has to undergo clinical trials in humans, usually multiple phases with increasing numbers of patients each phase. Clinical trials are a critical final step in FDA approval for any drug. (Of course, animal trials are the usual predecessor to this before the FDA will even allow a clinical trial in humans.)
Some drugs do get shortcutted through the trials phases faster than others. These are usually the class of drugs where the drug may possibly kill you or injure you, but what the drug treats will definately kill you. This is one such case - Even if the new drug has some nasty side effects, they're better than the alternative (MRSA or VRSA), and it sounds like even initial animal trials have indicated fewer side effects than vancomycin, which is a nasty drug that was approved anyway because the alternative to using it is nastier.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...the hard part is getting the big pharmaceutical companies to put time and money into the discovery and development of new antibiotics. It seems paradoxical, but it isn't a glamorous area of work, nor a particularly profitable one. The real money makers are those drugs that seemingly 99% of the population is taking at least one of (the ED, ADD/ADHD, hair loss, mild depression, insomnia, and allergy drugs). Drug companies are businesses first and many see little or no return on their investment in advanced antibiotics.
so i was one of the first posters on this thread and originally was +3 insightful. then some guy comes and says i should use wikipedia as a source, i go down to 2 and he goes up to 5 even though he just regurgitated what i said with a few links to a web site that is dubious at best (although i love wikipedia).
now i'm down to +1 redundant because more people came and replied to an earlier post, saying the same things i did... because they are listed earlier earlier even though i posted mine first.
now this message will probably get modded -1 flamebait even though i'm not trying to flame. it should get modded +5 pity.
sed "s/V1@gra/phosphod1esterase inhib1tors/g" spam_template_v109.txt > spam_template_v110.txt
Hmm, and people say reading slashdot is a waste of time.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I thought this was interesting:
s a.html
http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/DOC/mr
Of course, wether or not this risk exists, routine infant circumcision is still an appalling abuse of human and bodily integrity rights, and should be made illegal. It violates the infants bodily integrity rights be removing a normal, healthy part of their body. The body should be considered sacred, and especially in regards to infants and children who cannot give consent, we should not subject them to routine or elective removal of normal healthy body parts.
Parents should not have jurisdiction over their children to remove normal , healthy parts of their bodies, permenantly altering their bodies. Parents should only have very limited proxy rights over their children to authorise a surgical practice, only if there is a clear, convincing, immediate medical necessity to do so to treat a present and current medical abnormal disease condition that severely threatens the well being of the infant, and where all lesser invasive options have been exhausted and where the procedure cannot be deferred to a time when the person is able to consent themselves (age of 18). The foreskin is a normal and healthy part of the human body that was put thier by nature and that we are all born with. Prevention or custom are not valid reasons to remove any part of the body. It is not a valid reason to remove a part of the body if a there is no life threatening disease that presently exists there that necessitates it. The foreskin is not a disease but a normal and healthy part of the human body.
Children do have rights and are independant persons, not extensions of their parents. Parents do not have the absolute right to do whatever they want to their children as they please. As far as I am concerned, elective or routine circumcision should be a criminal assault.
Leaving a child intact gives the child the right to decide for themselves on the issue when they turn 18 and to be able to fully inform themselves on the issue. Children are too easily coerced and may not be able to aware of all issues and understand the issue, routine, unnecesary or elective surgical alterations of their bodies should not be allowed by society.
I could care less if someone over the age of 18 wants to be electively circumcised. Thats their choice and as long as they are doing so with informed consent free of coercion, i guess thats their right. They should be aware that they will probably regret it and they may lose 50%-90% of their sensitivity pleasure function.
She is said to have offered a big sum, or maybe it was a knighthood, to anyone who could invent a method to bring an edible magosteen to England. She had heard about how delicious it was, but wasn't willing to travel to the places where it grows.
Death. The grand panacea.
When travelling, it's ok if the airlines lose your emotional baggage.
Methycillin is a standard antibiotic. Vancomycin and Oxacyllin (or however you want to spell it) are already restricted to resistant stems, that is you only get them once it has become clear that your bug is M-resistant. If your doctor is worth even half his salary, he will make sure you actually continue the treatment until full recovery has been achieved. It's not like you could just walk into Boot's around the corner and ask for "that new superantibiotic", you know.
What happens when you have a profit-based medical system? Answer: natural cures are dismissed and nasty patentable drugs with serious side effects are invented instead and doctors are given one-sided information and incentive to prescribe them.
http://www.nelh.nhs.uk/hth/tea_tree.asp
Tea tree oil turns out to be effective against MRSA. No new cure is needed.
How can a bacteria be described as virulent?
Bet this
And similar.
In that particular case, I sat the individual down and explained how anti-biotics work and the importance of finishing ALL the medication. He nodded and seemed to understand, and then said, "Yeah, well, I'm going to save the rest of these pills for when I get sick again in a few weeks. I hate the cold season."
It's at times like those when I feel strongly compelled to get on a rocket ship and nuke the planet from orbit.
-FL
I certianly agree whole heartedly with the parent post. What is interesting, in this case, the MRSA would not be a as much of a danger to these infants if they were not subjected to this bizzare, perverse, brutal, inhumane, and insidiously cruel practice. There have been in fact cases where infants have contracted flesh eating bacterial infections from a circumcision wound in the US. These infants are being unnecessarily jeopardised and threatened with the risks of a surgical procedure which has no use and for which the rationales (custom, religion, prevention) are invalid as the parent post described.
These routine circumcisions do not treat current and present medical conditions which seriously threaten the child. There is no reason for them. They also permenantly alter and destroy a part of the childs body, and this damage is irreversible and cannot be undone later if the person decides when they are older and able to make decisions for themselves that they did not want this done to them. It astonoshes me that our society, which thinks of itself as being so concerned about human rights, would continue to allow what clearly is an assault and invasion of a childs bodily rights.
Posted AC to avoid blatent copyright infringment... Bacterial infection remains a serious threat to human lives because of emerging resistance to existing antibiotics. Although the scientific community has avidly pursued the discovery of new antibiotics that interact with new targets, these efforts have met with limited success since the early 1960s1, 2. Here we report the discovery of platensimycin, a previously unknown class of antibiotics produced by Streptomyces platensis. Platensimycin demonstrates strong, broad-spectrum Gram-positive antibacterial activity by selectively inhibiting cellular lipid biosynthesis. We show that this anti-bacterial effect is exerted through the selective targeting of beta-ketoacyl-(acyl-carrier-protein (ACP)) synthase I/II (FabF/B) in the synthetic pathway of fatty acids. Direct binding assays show that platensimycin interacts specifically with the acyl-enzyme intermediate of the target protein, and X-ray crystallographic studies reveal that a specific conformational change that occurs on acylation must take place before the inhibitor can bind. Treatment with platensimycin eradicates Staphylococcus aureus infection in mice. Because of its unique mode of action, platensimycin shows no cross-resistance to other key antibiotic-resistant strains tested, including methicillin-resistant S. aureus, vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus and vancomycin-resistant enterococci. Platensimycin is the most potent inhibitor reported for the FabF/B condensing enzymes, and is the only inhibitor of these targets that shows broad-spectrum activity, in vivo efficacy and no observed toxicity. Bacterial type II fatty-acid synthesis (FASII) is an attractive target for antibacterial drug discovery3, 4, 5, 6, 7. The initiation condensing enzyme, FabH, and elongation condensing enzymes, FabF/B, are essential components of fatty-acid biosynthesis8, 9, 10, 11 and are highly conserved among key pathogens. Although no drugs targeting condensing enzymes are used clinically, cerulenin12 and thiolactomycin13 selectively inhibit the condensation enzymes FabF/B and FabH. Systematic screening of 250,000 natural product extracts (83,000 strains in three growth conditions), with the use of a combination of target-based whole-cell and biochemical assays, led to the identification of a potent and selective small molecule from a strain of Streptomyces platensis recovered from a soil sample collected in South Africa. This molecule, platensimycin (C24H27NO7, relative molecular mass 441.47), comprises two distinct structural elements connected by an amide bond (Fig. 1a). Platensimycin shows potent, broad-spectrum Gram-positive activity in vitro (Table 1; methods described in ref. 14) and exhibits no cross-resistance to other key antibiotic-resistant bacteria including methicillin-resistant S. aureus, vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, and linezolid-resistant and macrolide-resistant pathogens. Platensimycin showed antibacterial activity against efflux-negative Escherichia coli (tolC), but not against wild-type E. coli, indicating that efflux mechanisms, and not compound specificity, limit the effectiveness of platensimycin in E. coli and possibly other Gram-negative bacteria. Low mammalian cell toxicity (50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) > 1,000 microg ml-1 in a HeLa cytotoxicity assay) and lack of antifungal activity (more than 64 microg ml-1) further suggests that platensimycin acts selectively. Platensimycin exhibited minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values of 0.5 and 1 microg ml-1 against S. aureus and S. pneumoniae, respectively. The efficacy of platensimycin in vivo was evaluated in a mouse model of a disseminated S. aureus infection. In this experiment, mice were cannulated in the jugular vein and drug was delivered with a continuous-delivery pump. The compound showed excellent efficacy with a 104-105 fold decrease (4-5 log reduction) of S. aureus infection over a 24-h treatment period (Fig. 1b) at 100 and 150 microg h-1 with no indication of toxicity. Monitoring of plasma concent
One, here's the link to the Nature article abstract (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7091/a bs/nature04784.html). Submittors of scientific stories, please go through the trouble of at least finding a link to the primary source. I beg you...
Two, Vancomycin does not interfere with protein synthesis. It inhibits cell wall formation by binding to the D-ala D-ala portion of the cell wall precursor peptides (it physically gets in the way). Resistance to vanco typically comes from staph picking up the resistance phage from enterococci, which have been resistant for years. This change causes the bacteria to produce D-ala D-lac, thus giving vanco nothing to bind to. This causes VRSA, which is completely resistant to vanco, as opposed to VISA, which is caused by a thickening of the cell wall in an attempt to keep vanco out of the cell and leads to partial resistance.
I do research on Staph. It's frustrating to everyone doing this work that in 50 years, we have really just a handful of targets in bacteria to attack. Here are our targets and some examples of the antibiotics we use
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1) DNA replication/Gyrase (cipro)
2) RNA synthesis (rifampin)
3) folate metabolism (sulfa drugs)
4) Protein synthesis (erythromycin, chloramphenicol, linezolid)
5) cell wall (penicillin, vancomycin)
What's great about this this new drug from Merck is that it's target isn't on the list above. It's a new target (fatty acid metabolism) and it's well tolerated by mammals.
But it's not the only new one out there. Check out these papers on:
a) targeting the proteolytic machinery of bacteria, i.e. clp proteases
Brötz-Oesterhelt, H. et al. Dysregulation of bacterial proteolytic machinery by a new class of antibiotics. Nature Med. 11, 1082-1087 (2005)
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v11/n10/abs/nm13
and
b) targeting Holliday junctions, i.e. how DNA recombines
Gunderson Carl and Segall Anca, 2006. DNA repair, a novel antibacterial target: Holliday junction-trapping peptides induce DNA damage and chromosome segregation defects. Mol. Micro. 59 (4), 1129-1148.
http://segall-lab.com/PDF/Gunderson2006.pdf
And don't forget to wash your hands! Make a researcher happy and save the drugs for another day!
That's will, not might or could, but will.
It's in their nature - as soon as something becomes a significant killer of organisms, then some will turn out to be more resistant and will be positively selected for. It's called evolution, folks, and it takes hundreds of generations to work. Which for a bacterium could be just a few months (the oft-cited "divide every 20 minutes" growth rate for bacteria is under ideal conditions ; average rates in non-ideal conditions are several times slower). But that's still faster than a human generation of 20-30 years.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
When you are 18, you can decide how much:
* piercing
* lots of piercings with great big bolts going through
* Australian aborigine style: sliced open vertically like unzipping a jacket
* regular
* glans too
* a couple inches
* whole thing
* one testicle
* two testicles
* everything