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."

Comments

Info is from a plagarism site/spam blog

[Animats]

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.

Re:Waaa, Doctor Help Me

[dgatwood]

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.