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New Superbug Weapon to Replace Failing Antibiotics
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers in British Columbia have identified a peptide that can fight infection by boosting the immune system. Because antibiotics are under threat due to an explosion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, this may be just in time."
New Superbug WEAPON. A superbug killing as a replacement for antibiotics would be interesting though.
This is a representation of some very adept work by researchers at Inimex and some well spent funding by CIHR.
The human body has seven systems: muscoskeletal, reproductive, skin, cardiopulmonary, nervous, digestive, and immune. Many of the ailments which people experience--cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative disorders, prion diseases, leukemia, infections--invade tissues of the six other systems but are ultimately traceable as a deficiency in their own immune system. The immune system is trained as the maintenance arm of the body. When cells become cancerous the immune system is trained to find and remove them. When viruses and bacteria enter the body the immune system is trained to kill them. When plaques build up in the body the immune system is trained to remove them. When cells are starving, or asphyxiated, or agitated it is the immune system which is responsible for transmitting the proper signals systemwide and stimulating other tissues to produce the materials necessary to fix the problem.
The devoted study of immunology, of which the language which cells use to communicate with each other is central, has been pushed aside for many years by the larger, more established, more prestigious research groups both in academia and in the industry. When I worked at Abbott Laboratories, starting in '99, I found that their immunology department had recently been all but terminated in favor of shuffling the money to the devoted disease areas. While treating the diseases as separate from the body has led to some novel treatments (eg. antiangionesis and apoptosis for cancer) it seemed, to me, that a whole boatload of data which pointed to the potential cures available within the body itself were being ignored--not because they lacked scientific merit--but because the social structures within the company (and the industry) were attached to the research paths which were easier for the marketers and PR releases to handle.
To some extent that's the way things must work. The venture capitalists and investors need to know where their money is going or else they aren't going to contribute. That's a sad state of society, though, when one group's ignorance is stifling another group's innovation.
The study of immunology has quite a bit of potential for worldwide medicine. ImClone managed to open the popular path with its approach of monoclonal antibodies, though that segment was somewhat sabotaged by the insider trading scandal. Let's hope that companies like Inimex, and hopefully some companies in the US, will begin to devote greater resources to understanding how the body naturally works and working with it. Many of the detrimental side effects of today's pharmaceuticals are directly related to the immune system's response to those molecules being introduced into the body. The industry has really created its own problem of side effects by buckling in to the demands of the financiers and not holding to the strict scientific principles.
Even though they're in Vancouver I sent a resume.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
We show that an innate defense-regulator peptide (IDR-1) was protective in mouse models of infection with important Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. When given from 48 h before to 6 h after infection, the peptide was effective by both local and systemic administration. Because protection by IDR-1 was prevented by in vivo depletion of monocytes and macrophages, but not neutrophils or B- and T-lymphocytes, we conclude that monocytes and macrophages are key effector cells. IDR-1 was not directly antimicrobial: gene and protein expression analysis in human and mouse monocytes and macrophages indicated that IDR-1, acting through mitogen-activated protein kinase and other signaling pathways, enhanced the levels of monocyte chemokines while reducing pro-inflammatory cytokine responses. To our knowledge, an innate defense regulator that counters infection by selective modulation of innate immunity without obvious toxicities has not been reported previously.
The article is a link to a spam blog. The original content is in this press release, which was copied without attribution. The original source and contact information were removed, six ads were added, and a false claim of copyright was made.
The people behind this are Web Doodle LLC of Missoula, MT, run (as of 2002) by Branden Long. They have other similar spam blogs.
Actually, there has never ever ever ever been any causal link between antibiotic prescriptions for personal, in-home use and the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Given the number of studies by people trying to scare people away from antibioitics, it is likely that such a link simply does not exist, as it would likely have been found by now if it did.
Antibiotic resistance develops as a direct result of hospital use of antibiotics. Unfortunately, hospital use usually equates with life-threatening. The reason that resistant strains take hold in hospitals is that you have a higher concentration of sick people breathing the same air, using some of the same shared facilities, etc. with doctors and nurses moving from patient to patient. As much as they try to minimize the spread of illness among patients, it still occurs, and unlike in your home, the people in the hospital are often already sick or in poor health, and are thus more susceptible to bacteria that (barely) survived a round of antibiotics.
By contrast, letting yourself "wait a few days while you get better" from bacterial infections has been linked to numerous diseases, including several varieties of arthritis, rheumatic fever, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, and even heart damage. Waiting it out is absolutely the worst thing you can do.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This is a very speculative and pretty dodgy article. Firstly, it's not a new concept (being healthy is the best tool for stopping infection before it starts, and, secondary to this, immunization, sanitation and quarantine).
Secondly, drugs already exist which are used in severe sepsis to boost the immune system. These drugs are very dangerous and expensive and when used inappropriately cause as many deaths as they save lives.
While it is true that antibiotic use is excessive, the situation we have is that the people who are getting the MRSA and VRE and other 'superbug' infections are frequently already immune compromised and, in whole body infection, invariably die without antibiotics - nothing else is proven to work without them.
Also, it's a peptide. You can't take it as a tablet - it's not going to be on the shelves of your supermarket - and if it is, better off eating a hard boiled egg! If anything, it will be a small scale intravenous drug for use in intensive care units, usually when all else fails, just like all these other 'breakthrough' solutions.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Felt the same way. UBC's has put a press release out. Here's the link.
0 7/mr-07-030.html?src=ubcca
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/media/releases/20
[/sarcasm]
"Actually, stopping when you feel better is a pretty good idea. The bug is gone, and the body will take care of the rest. The more time you expose organisms to antibiotics, the more time they have to adapt to it."
.. i feel like their aren't words to describe the stupidity that exists on our little blue planet. The bottle strictly states, "take all medication even if you feel better" and some moron thinks, quote, "stopping when you feel better is a pretty good idea" hahhahaahhah... do the world a favour and by a shotgun. lmao.. i seriously didn't realize there were people that were this low on the IQ scale...
I didn't realize the world was so full of idiots. LoL
As a few other people pointed out, a boosted immune system isn't a good thing. A Healthy immune system is. No, I'm not a bioligist, Doctor, Immunologist, Rheumatologist, or Endocrinologist... but I have one of each in my contact list (Ok... so the Biologist is a friend who gave it up for Software engineering.... but I do have the others).
A heightened immune system causes Psoriasis, Psoriatic Arthritis, Osteo Arthritis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Allergies, Graves Syndrome, Crohn's Disease, and a whole host of things that range from unpleasant (allergies and Osteo Arthritis) to seriously painful (Psoriatic Arthritis) to life threatening (Crohn's and very severe psoriasis). I live it every day. It's ranging from my major discomfort with the current 5000+ pollen count on my business trip to Atlanta (where I'm sitting now) where Zyrtec is barely effective, to my Psoriasis (which gets worse when my immune system gets excitied like it is with my allergies pumped up) that leaves me with large raw bloody areas that pass for skin. Yeah... I know... you really wanted to read that while you ate dinner... welcome to my life.
Trust me... DON'T overactivate your immune system.... live well, take antibiotics only when you HAVE to and for as long as you have to, and enjoy a normal and healthy immune system.
You went from step 1 to profit without filling in the question marks.
What exactly are the "demands of their patients" and what does it have to do with patient non-complaince?That's inline with what I said, but I attributed it to patient non-compliance, which breeds drug resistant bacteria.
OTOH, you attribute it to overperscription of antibiotics. To counter that assertion, consider that drug resistant strains of HIV are showing up. Are you going to argue that HIV retro-virals are being overperscribed?
Here's what the World Health Organization has to say:
When HIV replication is not fully suppressed, drug resistance results. This situation is frequently linked to non-compliance of ARV therapy.
Google will provide you numerous articles saying the exact same thing about:
Hepatitis
Tuberculosis
Staph-A aka MRSA
Malaria
and that's just off the top of my head.
I'll concede that antibiotics in animal feed is leading to drug resistant bugs showing up in the human population, but I stand by my assertion that amongst humans, non-compliance (not overperscription) is the main cause of drug resistant bacteria and virii in the USA.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Actually, stopping when you feel better is a pretty good idea. The bug is gone
Clearly you have no idea how this process works. You have merely transformed an infection into a subclinical infection. You haven't killed all the bacteria by any means. You've just killed the most vulnerable ones - enough to allow what was bothering you - the swollen tissue, massive release of histamine, bradykinin, etc that was causing you pain.
Oh you feel better - but bacteria are still there - and these are the ones that were harder to kill. The more resistant ones. Oh you may or may not have a relapse. You are no longer infected, but you are colonized. And these resistant bacteria you can pass on to other people, or they can come back to haunt you with a resistant infection at a later date.
Bacterial suceptibility to antibiotics is dose dependent. I could kill all bacteria with a massive dose of any drug, but I would probably kill you, too.
We determine an effective dose at which almost ALL bacteria are inhibited/destroyed. The treatment time isn't a number we pull out of our backsides - it's determined statistically as the shortest time at which virtually all bacteria are killed (ie, cultures of the affective site turn negative), at the effective dose. Yes most bacteria are killed in the first couple days. But diminishing returns means that we need to keep giving the antibiotic for a longer time to make sure vitually all (if not all) bacteria are eradicated.
What you propose is worthy of the "Tom Cruise Medical Award". Make sure you clean your Thetans while you're at it.
On the other hand you make a vaild point. Most patients EXPECT an antibiotic, and hate us when they go home with the "take a tylenol and get some rest" line. It puts a lot of pressure on a doc who makes his living from "word of mouth" advertising.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Researchers Find New Superbug Weapon for Failing Antibiotics Arsenal (3/27/2007),
...
The discovery, in animal models, will be published March 25 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
[from above]Except that antibiotic-resistant strains are generally less virulent than the old-fashioned kind
The view that antibiotic-resistant strains are less virulent is rapidly falling out of favor with bugs such as community acquired MRSA, XDR-TB and VRE. We are seeing bugs that are as virulent if not more in the case of CA-MRSA that are wrecking havoc on human hosts as they not only are antibiotic resistant but have specific virulence factors to work in human hosts. Panton-. Valentin leukocidin (i may have spelled that incorrectly) allows CA-MRSA to hang on to human skin very nicely, and the bug is an absolute terror if it gets into the blood stream. Anyways, My point isn't to go into the nitty gritty of virulence of emerging pathogens but rather to say that we aren't seeing less virulent new bugs but rather very deadly new bugs.
Z
--I swear, it was a case of isolated idiopathic hemibalissmus
An observation does not a logical argument make.
Step 1. "The average person *can't* be trusted to take all their antibiotics,"
Step 2. ???
Step 3. "so the problem continues because the path of least resistance (and most profit) for doctors is to succumb to the demands of their patients"Is that your step 2?
It sounds like a rehash of step 3, but with an extra helping of blame for the doctors.
No offense, but you still haven't created an argument, much less one backed with facts. I've explained my position & backed it up with facts. Please do the same.
Part 2:
"I'm not sure that it's an over-prescription problem in the same sense, but similar selection factors may be at work."
So are you again suggesting that doctors are to blame, but this time, not through overprescriptions?
AFAIK, there is:
1. Patient Compliance
2. Patient Non-compliance
2 b. Patient Partial compliance
3. Doctor over prescription
Your statement doesn't seem to fit into any of the above categories.
Please elaborate on these "similar selection factors" and plug them into my 1-3 framework (feel free to add whatever numbers or sub-sections you need)
Conclusion:
There are reasonable arguments to be made for your position (I could argue it either way), but you aren't making them & I suspect you're just talking out your ass based on what you 'feel' is right. I encourage you to get facts or gtfo.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!