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Sea Sponge Extract Conquers Resistant Bacteria
Science News has an article on research into a compound found in a particular kind of sea sponge that seems to have the ability to restore antibiotics' effectiveness against resistant bacteria. The hope is that, since the compound is not itself deadly or even harmful to bacteria, it may skew the antibiotic-bacteria arms race in our favor. "Chemical analyses of the sponge's chemical defense factory pointed to a compound called algeferin. Biofilms, communities of bacteria notoriously resistant to antibiotics, dissolved when treated with fragments of the algeferin molecule. And new biofilms did not form. So far, the algeferin offshoot has, in the lab, successfully treated bacteria that cause whooping cough, ear infections, septicemia and food poisoning. The compound also works on... [MRSA] infections, which wreak havoc in hospitals. 'We have yet to find one that doesn't work,' says [one of the researchers]."
"Science News has an article on research into a compound found in a particular kind of sea sponge that seems to have the ability to restore antibiotics' effectiveness against resistant bacteria. The hope is that, since the compound is not itself deadly or even harmful to bacteria, it may skew the antibiotic-bacteria arms race in our favor. "
Good thing we're not destroying our environment so discoveries like this can continue to be made.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
'We have yet to find one that doesn't work,' says [one of the researchers]."
Oh, but when they do, then once again the vile bacteria will have the upper... psuedopod.
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My hero!
What?
Well I propose that we do with it what we did with penicillin in the 50's, and infuse it into livestock feed, thereby ending the battle against bacteria forever. FOREVER!
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
It's funny that phage medicine has been demostrated to be very effective to treat antibiotic resistant bacteria, yet it's never been adopted in western medicine. But something comes along that works in conjunction with anti biotics and it's hot stuff. Fucking pharmasutical companys.
Yeah, they probably thought the bacteria would never come up with an answer to penicillin either.
They've been around an awfully long time, and there's a reason for that: nothing's beaten them yet. Our attempt at suppressing them has been thwarted in just a few decades - not even a blink of an eye on a biological timescale.
I wouldn't be crowing about having the little blighters licked just yet.
It would be perfect against salmonella. Salmonella is extremely hazardous to public health, because it can reside dormant in the intestinal biofilm for practically indefinite periods (up to 25 years), and the carrier remains infectious all the time. A single bacterium can cause a potentially fatal illness, so in some jurisdictions, anyone who works with food is tested for salmonella. Unfortunately the only way to positively remove salmonella from a carrier is ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic generally considered an antibiotic of last resort. Its serious, potentially disabling side-effects include permanent damage of peripheral nerves, the intestine and spontaneous tendon rupture. A way to dissolve the bacteria from the biofilm would probably make them easier to eradicate with less dangerous antibiotics.
Now can we be a bit more careful with it this time? No attempts to coat the planet in a thin layer of the stuff, please. The loss of the best weapons against disease we've ever found is not a fair price to pay for cheaper meat. Hopefully we've learned that lesson, although every time I see a doctor prescribe antibiotics just to get someone out of their surgery, I despair a little.
Aa few years ago I sat outside the entry doors to an ICU where a relative was lying. I sat there for many days, and many hours.
I observed every single nurse stop and scrub at the scrub station which was located near the ICU entry doors. I observed maybe
one doctor out of thirty doctors scrub at the station. Most doctors walked right through the doors and did not scrub.
You can draw your own conclusions about this, but it seems obvious that things weren't being done in a consistent manner,
and I've been told by some European doctor buddies that this
sort of lax behavior in matters of sterile procedures is NOT tolerated in German hospitals.
So, magic bullets are great, but what we really need, in the US at least, is a change in the way the medical "profession" behaves. After what I saw with my own eyes, I can't say the conduct I observed was what I'd call professional, and it will be a cold day in hell before I allow myself to be admitted as a patient in the hospital at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The compound is called ageliferin.
I wonder if this stuff will dissolve dental biofilms. Would be cool to finally have a simple, 100% effective treatment that totally prevents plaque, gum disease, cavities... Tho I suppose if it's that good, the ADA will bury it.
-- *My* journal is more interesting than *yours*...
Yeah, they probably thought the bacteria would never come up with an answer to penicillin either.
Actually it didn't. Instead what happened was antibiotics were handed out like candy and people weren't made to complete their courses.
If you stop taking antibiotics before the whole course is complete, any remaining bacteria are those which have some resistance (but in the beginning not enough to survive a completed course). Multiply this by the millions of people who didn't complete their courses over the decades, and you have trouble.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
T+10 years: government bodies approve sea-sponge-enhanced antibiotics for use on humans.
T+12 years: patients start telling their doctor: "My friend told me regular antibiotics don't work. I want sea-sponge antibiotics!
T+17 years: sea-sponge resistent bacteria start to emerge because of patients not completing their courses.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
All true. However the antibiotic usage in humans is vastly outweighed by the antibiotic usage in livestock. One of my med-school courses cited an instance in...Denmark, I believe it was. The annual human consumption of an antibiotic came to something like 25kg that year. Consumption of an analogous antibiotic in livestock for that same year was something on the order of 25,000kg. Over-prescription of antibiotics for CYA or, more commonly, to patients who aren't satisfied until they've receive an antibiotic for their viral (sigh) infection is certainly a problem. Before we get too worked up over that, however, let's stop feeding the drugs to the damned cows, pigs, and chickens!
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
Ok, besides the mis-spelling of "ageliferin" (for those wondering why Google's not bringing up much)...
This is pretty big, but it's not coming out of nowhere. I'm not too familiar with this particular compound, but it appears to be a bio-film breaker -- most (but not all) of which work by disrupting quorum sensing. What's exciting about this particular example is both its potency and apparent non-toxicity.
If suitable for use in humans, you can expect this to dramatically improvement treatment of various types of infections involving biofilm-forming bacteria -- you find these a lot in Cystic Fibrosis patients, immunocompromised patients, and various infections of catheters and implanted items and such.
Both exist. Bacteria can evade antibiotics in many ways, some active, some passive.
The easiest way to actively evade antibiotics is by developing efflux pumps which will pump out a certain drug or class of drugs (Tetracycline, beta-lactame).
The easiest way to passively evade antibiotics is through modification of the drug target which is a rare thing but can happen since bacteria are quite prone to mutations and also multiply like mad.
The thing that completely stupefies me is how that stuff is supposed to do away with resistances... Maybe it makes them barf their plasmids but still, I have no idea how that is supposed to work. Especially since some plasmids come with their own simple but effective measures against it.
That option would be pretty easy to verify though.
Many of those anti-bacterial products actually do not contain antibiotics. Instead, they contain compounds that are germicidal and kill everything they touch.
The difference is critical. Antibiotics are compounds that selectively kill bacteria, causing less harm to human cells. They must therefore target some unique aspect of bacterial biology in their killing action; the specificity to which such targeting must take place is the reason why it's so easy for a bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance. "You want to bind to my protein X? Okay, I'll mutate it!" Done.
Germicidal compounds, on the other hand, kill everything they touch by mechanisms that are not bacteria-specific. An excellent example is rubbing alcohol, which basically rips the bacteria apart. Unfortunately, it also rips YOUR cells apart, which is why you can't give it to somebody to cure their infection.
Resistance to this latter category is not as much of a problem. It's exceedingly difficult to evolve, say, Purell resistance (active ingredient ethanol); the rare bugs that are resistant (e.g. spores) have been resistant long before Purell was around.
An unstated argument here is that people distributing medicine and those who don't take their full course are somehow at fault.
Erm, that's because it is their fault. Nothing unstated about it. When getting antibiotics, the vast majority of people get either the full course or nothing at all - there's no in-between. If you choose not to take the full course after receiving it, it's your fault.
Of course there are plenty of people who can't get the drugs at all - but that's not germane to this conversation as such people are not contributing to drug-resistant bacteria.
Does it really make moral sense that farm animals are over treated and people end up with half treatments?
It must be fun building up so many straw men. That's the only reason I can figure that you have for doing it so often.
Do you think that people really want to have less than proper medicine?
Yes. As is evidenced by the fact that so many people think that because the "feel fine now" they don't have to finish their course of meds.