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Drug-Resistant Superbugs Sweeping Across Europe
Pierre Bezukhov writes "Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common cause of pneumonia, urinary tract, and bloodstream infections in hospital patients. The superbug form is resistant even to a class of medicines called carbapenems, the most powerful known antibiotics, which are usually reserved by doctors as a last line of defense. The ECDC said several EU member states were now reporting that between 15 and up to 50 percent of K. pneumoniae from bloodstream infections were resistant to carbapenems. To a large extent, antibiotic resistance is driven by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them. Experts say primary care doctors are partly to blame for prescribing antibiotics for patients who demand them unnecessarily, and hospitals are also guilty of overuse."
Any reason why this would not be the case in the US?
So now we can train bugs to say no to drugs, next step is to move to animals and then finally humans!
I wonder if such a common thing as antibiotic soap can increase resistance over a period of time.
The same whiny hypochondriacal medieval idiots who demand antibiotics to fight a virus.
I often think that 19th century physicians had it figured out. Blue pill (placebo), slime draught (nasty tasting placebo) and let some blood. Treat the root cause, i.e. the hypochondria.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What's the "K"? You can only abbreviate it if you've already written it in full beforehand
All true but the majority of resistant strains come from countries where antibiotics are unregulated (i.e. you can buy them over the counter without prescription)
> > which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them.
> which encourages bacteria to **evolve** new ways of overcoming them.
which encourages god to design new ways for bacteria of overcoming them.
The concern centers on farmers' routine use of antibiotics. Its use on livestock accounts for roughly half of the 25,000 tons produced in the United States each year. - link -
The question of whether we are creating ‘resistances' in zoomatic organisms (that affect both species) out in the feedlot and pastures and passing this on to humans with veterinary use of drugs, however, is still a very up-in-the air question. - link -
> > > which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them.
> > which encourages bacteria to **evolve** new ways of overcoming them.
> which encourages god to design new ways for bacteria of overcoming them.
which encourages god to increase his research and development funding to develop evolution to allow new ways for bacteria of overcoming them.
which is totally what she said
So if we eat meat that has been fed antibiotics, it will effect our resistances as well?
Bacteria on the continent are allowed a little antibiotics with meals even at a young age, so they grow up with a much more mature attitude towards it. That's why they're much better at handling antibiotics than British and American bacteria.
oversimplified.
It's based on the idea, seen in insects with pesticide use, that if you kill x percentage of insects, some may survive and their offspring may have a much higher level of tolerance, meaning more pesticides are needed to kill the insects. No doubt this happens with bacteria too and is *a* cause of antibiotic resistance.
Consider that livestock may be given antibiotics, and they may have bacteria, like E. coli or Salmonella sps which can make humans ill. This represents an additional vector not generally covered in analysis.
However there may be several other big issues that are not currently included in the analysis. Many species of bacteria are known to assimilate genetic material from other bacteria even from other genuses. This means that there is a possibility that antibiotic resistance can spread between bacterial species as a result of hospital waste, causing a form of genetic pollution.
Nature is fundamentally more complex than we can model. Any sufficiently complex model would be nature itself.
However, the rise of superbugs is fascinating to watch.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Well, it is going to lead to evolution, but you are overlooking horizontal gene transfer among bacteria that could be accelerating the problem. This isn't pure mutation and reproduction, but the bacteria equivalent of developing their own anti-anti-biotic and spreading it among their own kind too.
It is evolution + developed.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
Also I don't think we *know* what sorts of antibiotic resistance may be created in other countries through this practice. Consider simply that there are bugs that can use livestock and humans as hosts, and our insistence on routine feed of antibiotics to animals should be quite frightening.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
> > which encourages bacteria to **evolve** new ways of overcoming them.
> which encourages god to design new ways for bacteria of overcoming them.
Which kills the weaklings and singles out the resistants to bread and progressively switch over the population (instead of allowing resistent genes to delude)
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I've had a doctor tell me that I / my kid has a bacterial infection but it's not that serious, so the best option is to rest and let the body's own immune system take care of it.
Yet, something tells me that those doctors would have prescribed antibiotics if I had cluelessly demanded that I get 'proper medicine'...
.: Max Romantschuk
While I think there are concerns that the antibiotics for livestock may get passed on to people a little bit through the meat it's more that some bacteria affect both people and livestock.
Create a resistance in the bacteria (to the antibiotics) attacking the livestock and then, maybe, the new and improved bacteria could be passed to humans (either from the animals themselves or improper handling of the raw meat).
And farmers pretty much feed all of their animals antibiotics because it's easier? cheaper? than only feeding it to animals once they're sick (in general it's a lot harder to tell when an animal is sick than a human). Or at least that's my understanding, I could be wrong.
I've used that one on creationists before. They just declare that it isn't real evolution, because it doesn't change enough.
Antibiotics tend to be big, complex molecules. They won't last long in the organism, and they'll last even less time in the oven.
Now if only people understood it better, so that they didn't use antibiotics in absolutely everything and expect antibiotics the moment they get a sniffle. Bacteria have been around for billions of years. They are the most successful reproduction and evolution machines on the planet. In a battle between bacterial evolution and human ingenuity we are going to lose SO bad if we are complacent.
Not a parasite bug but a bacteria. The human body is not a piece of software to call every problem a bug.
Fascinating until some gets into a casual scrape or cut in your skin...
Another cost of our overly-medicating society is that we forget how important it is to keep our immune systems healthy. We scrub and clean and sanitize everything at every turn thinking we can limit or even eliminate those dastardly bacteria which are always bad. (Not all bacteria are bad... how is the over-use of antibiotics harming the good bacteria we depend on?)
Good practices and good hygiene, of course, are important things to maintain... foods should be cooked and handled properly. Hands and bodies kept clean as well. But "sanitized" is just going too far in most cases. And so when people get sick, they have untrained immune systems which don't react as well as it should which necessitates the use of antibiotics.
George Carlin saw this problem long, long ago when he did his "swimming in raw sewage" routine. His point was to keep the immune system operating and working well. My point is that we can't seek to eliminate all "bad things" without serious consequence which includes upsetting nature's balances. Instead we should seek to coexist with bacteria in our world and seek ways to maintain a healthy balance. Instead, people seek to dominate and eliminate "their enemies" without considering the long term consequences of such reactions.
People who think our ingestion of antibiotics from animals is a factor in antibiotic resistance are crackpots who don't pay attention to the fact that we've been eating trace amounts of penicillin for tens of thousands of years. That's not a serious concern. There are however a few serious concerns:
1) Some bugs like E coli and Salmonella sps can be hosted in animals or humans. Antibiotic resistance they pick up in animals will be a factor when the human gets sick.
2) Some bugs are known to swap DNA. This means that antibiotic resistance in a harmless bug could turn up in a harmful one later.
3) Bugs which are harmless today could jump species and become harmful tomorrow.
4) Environmental pollution around concentrated animal feeding operations could lead to antibiotic resistance in soil-borne bacteria.
Now, in the US, there is supposed to be a clear separation between classes of antibiotics used on animals and those used on people, although this is more porous than we might like to think. There are however no guarantees that other countries have the exact same divisions. Moreover even assuming that this is the case, it deprives us humans of the effectiveness of certain classes of antibiotics which might prove useful in the future.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I think people are oversimplifying by talking about "stupid" parents. The truth is that since antibiotics and antivirals have few side-effects and are cheap to produce, it's individually rational for people to use them. But when everyone uses them, we get lots of resistance.
Right. The reason these traits didn't exist before hand is that they were disadvantageous. So in the absence of antibiotics, they disappear.
We keep sterilizing and over-cleaning everything in hospitals (ie some UK ones where to enter sections is like entering a military biohazard zone), plus the abuse of antibiotics of course. Proper sterlization should occour just before a surgery, the rest should be treated just like any other public space ,with the exception of case specific illnesses. Not to mention that is the nasty chemicals that will give you a cancer more likely (see the overcleaning and hodgkin lymphoma connection) not a common bio treat, to which we evolved in thousands of years in resistence. Also medical community should start to think about dropping wide spectrum antibiotics in favor of phages viruses, which are a much better specific option to treat specific bacteria at a time, with a basically 100% success rate...
This is a sobering article. A quarter of people think antibiotics cure colds?
Actually given a lot of people I come across day to day I find that very reassuring. Three quarters of people know that antibiotics don't cure colds! I would have expected at least a third to say "What's an antibiotic?" and one in ten to say "what's a cold?".
I agree with your points about the immune system and sanitizing everything. I would go further and say I enjoy beef tartare, sashimi, and good old fashioned home-made eggnog, plus a few scandinavian desserts with raw eggs.
I would however like to point out that with simple care, most bacterial infections can be treated without antibiotics. The last few times I have had skin infections, I have used sterilized kitchen knives to lance the infection and hot salt water to draw fluids, etc, out, and I got better at least as fast as I would have with antibiotics. I also travel a LOT and have had E coli and possibly even a mild case of cholera. None of these need to be treated with antibiotics either (with cholera the key concern is hydration, and with any diarrhea I have found the key is to go off all foods for a while to let one's immune system get a grip on what's in the digestive tract.
We use antibiotics a lot when we don't really have to, because we believe in modern medicine and all of that, and because it's easier than teaching people to soak infected fingers in hot salt water.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Just adding to that last comment. One of the big issues with antibiotics is that they often target harmless bacteria as well as bad ones. This means impoverished microbial biodiversity, which means it is easier to get infected again with something else. And so one intervention leads to another.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Recent inspections in Germany showed that over 90% of all chicken produced for consumption contain remains of antibiotics. So I guess you are right.
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,797970,00.html (german),
http://de.babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fwissenschaft%2Fmensch%2F0%2C1518%2C797970%2C00.html&lp=de_en&btnTrUrl=%C3%9Cbersetzen (Yahoo Babelfish Translation)
Nope, I think you mistook me for someone else.
There is no question at all that synthetic antibacterial substances, often added to consumer products, will directly breed resistant bacteria.
As one ubiquitous example, please research triclosan's effects on bacterial biology, as well as its environmental impact. Triclosan will degrade into dioxin and other carcinogens when exposed to sunlight. The proof is in the pudding.
Lastly, even if there were such a synthetic additive which somehow did not potentiate microbial resistance, it would still likely add to our constant daily bombardment of carcinogens.
Trading short term pathology for a longer term pathology, which costs hundreds of billions of dollars annually to deal with, is not a very wise public health strategy. There are no short cuts.
"The illegal we can do right now; the unconstitutional will take a little longer." --Henry Kissinger
It should be illegal for doctors to listen to patients on drug choices and procedure selection.
"that we've been eating trace amounts of penicillin for tens of thousands of years."
Some modern antibiotics can get into the soft tissue of an animal and stay there until it is slaughtered and can then survive the cooking process. Penicillin can't.
I have argued here and elsewhere that there is a high costs to our legal system. Sadly, just about every liberal screams that it only costs 3%. But the issue is that due to quick ability to sue, docs have adopted protective medicine. Not protection for the patient, but protection against lawsuits. As such, they give a number of antibiotics that we would not do.
However, a big issue is that ag makes propholatic use of antibiotics. That is more true in Asia esp. china, than it is anywhere else.
That is what is about cause a massive lowering of the world population.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy And the bacteriophages will evolve alongside the bacteria they are designed to kill. Evolution will do the work for us.
which encourages creationists to evolve new arguments to overcome all evidence.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Just think about it. Within 50 years all disease will be conquered. We still probably won't fully comprehend the necessary symbiotic relationship between germs, our gut flora and our bodies but we will understand profoundly better. But the big thing will be able to supplement our immune system but in a direct directed way that no germ can compensate for. We will be able to identify viruses and bacteria within hours and create artificial antibodies, aka germs that fight germs. All within hours. Cancer? A thing of the past.
But we will still get colds and the flu because we will let it happen. Since our bodies were designed to get sick and fight battles which develop the immune system naturally. But at the point of it becoming life threatening a visit to the doctor would cure it. Antibiotics will work again because we will systematically eliminate all the human caused drug resistant strains.
A hundred years from now a man will be able to be virtually immortal. Everyone will have to be artificially sterilized. To have children you would need to give up your immortality. For a hundred years after that society will be fractured into different experiments where people try to balance life with relative levels of healthcare and dying and the ability to have children. Most people will probably choose to die after 300 years. Automated manufacturing has reached the point where we really won't need very many people involved. People will have more free time and I think creativity will become the biggest commodity. And as people get older they will become more and more bored. Some people will choose to die, others will simple have their minds wiped either permanently or temporarily. Others will choose to live with the risk of a random death and or doing dangerous things. I don't think there will be only one solution.
And while it may happen that someone or some group decides to reduce the population I think the biggest problem with immortality is boredom as I have already put forward. And the solution to boredom is lots of creative minds in combination with minds to entertain.
Most of the forms of Christianity in the EU have no qualms with the theory of evolution.
Probably because in the EU it's been banned (since 2006 for growth promotion purposes).
But while you're blaming agriculture - don't forget the GM crops which use antibiotic resistance as a marker for the bacteria carrying the required genetic modifications.
This has been banned in the EU (for the last 5 years).
My husband almost never gets sick, but when he does, it's rarely a minor illness. A little over two weeks ago, he came down with a very severe, very rapidly-progressing respiratory infection. Within a period of 96 hours, it went from a mild cough with no fever to severe pneumonia and a fever over 40C. The doctor prescribed amoxicillin/clavulanic acid on the morning of the third day, but it didn't really have any effect. My husband only started to get better once the doctor put him on levofloxacin a couple of days later. I think there's a very good chance his infection was caused by some kind of drug-resistant bacteria, but they didn't do any cultures, so we'll never know for sure.
On the other hand, I seem to be getting fewer and milder respiratory infections in the past few years. Even though I've always been prone to respiratory infections (I used to get bronchitis and/or pneumonia pretty much every winter), and have become quite a connoisseur of antibiotics, the worst I came down with this time was a mild ear/sinus infection and extreme fatigue. I also managed to avoid catching the H1N1 flu despite staying home to care for my daughter while she had it in 2009.
Virtually *everything* we eat has traces of penicillin in it. The point is that if consuming trace amounts of antibiotics would cause antibiotic resistance generally, penicillin should never have worked in modern times but it did quite well (also despite sporadic uses in the ancient world I might add too).
For resistance to be developed, bacteria have to be exposed to enough of a background level to start killing the bacteria. Otherwise there is no natural selection.
"Worse bacteria under stress have a horrible habit of taking up random bits of DNA from the environment" which include those bacteria that are not human pathogens, and this is why the antibiotic pollution issues around CAFO's is such an issue, and why bacterial, whether pathogenic or not, which pick up antibiotic resistance inside animals in these areas can spread it to other bacteria which may be pathogens.
Either way the problem is entirely independent of whether or not we consume trace amounts of the antibiotics.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"...which encourages bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them."
This is WRONG! These mutations are random and happen anyways. There have always been drug-resistant bacteria, and there always will be. The bacteria do not change their behavior at all. The resistant strains are merely selected by the use of the drugs. In the absence of the antibiotics, those strains cannot compete with more basic strains, and would die out.
And farmers pretty much feed all of their animals antibiotics because it's easier? cheaper? than only feeding it to animals once they're sick (in general it's a lot harder to tell when an animal is sick than a human). Or at least that's my understanding, I could be wrong.
Modern industrial cattle operations feed cows corn because calorie-for-calorie it is the cheapest food available for cows. The problem is that cows evolved to eat grass, not grains, so their stomachs aren't suited to it. They come down with stomach acidosis, and they will only live about six months once the corn diet begins.
While they are alive, they get infections via the stomach ulcers. So antibiotics are mixed into the corn to somewhat protect the stomach at least long enough for the cows to get obese for market.
I didn't choose the word 'obese' lightly. Industrial cows are literally obese, which is why their meat is so fatty. Fatty meat is easier to cook, and us dumb Westerners have been trained to prefer fatty meat ("nicely marbled").
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Here in EU the doctors are much more "yeah, try and live with it, wouldn't want to give out too many drugs" exactly to prevent resistance, and if it happens anyway - well you are toast as well America.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"Experts say primary care doctors are partly to blame for prescribing antibiotics for patients who demand them unnecessarily"
Sorry, I have seen from personal experience over and over again. Patients never "demand them unnecessarily".
Rather, patients go to the doctor. And the first thing the doctor almost always tries is "Here's a prescription for antibiotics." It's almost more akin to a diagnosis test. Take these and we'll determine if it's viral or baterial.
Occasionally the doctor will call for a test such as flu, strep, etc. Just recently we were concerned about my 4 yr old daughter having been bit twice by ticks in a 2 week period. Short time later all her lymph nodes were swollen, she ached, and was generally miserable.
Rather than evaluate for any of the tick born infections. Our doctor was convinced it was the flu. We knew it was NOT the flu. They did a flu test, and guess what. We were right.
The truth of the matter is most American doctors are arrogant. 1/2 the time they are wrong. And very few care about treatment, they just want to prescribe and send away.
Medicine is in a second dark age.
Now, in the US, there is supposed to be a clear separation between classes of antibiotics used on animals and those used on people, although this is more porous than we might like to think. There are however no guarantees that other countries have the exact same divisions. Moreover even assuming that this is the case, it deprives us humans of the effectiveness of certain classes of antibiotics which might prove useful in the future.
That principle was abruptly defenestrated under pressure from the agricultural sector. Even the very precious vancomycin, a "last line of defense" against multiple-drug-resistant pathogens, is being fed to cows now.
The alternative is expensive beef. Antibiotics are needed in order to fatten cows on corn. The alternatives are all much more expensive, but at least they are compatible with a cow's stomach lining. Unfortunately that would mean doubling the price of beef. If that happened, then the ballast would be shrieking at their congressmen within the hour ("McDonalds sez they hafta raise the price a'burger by two dollar!"), and boom, we're right back to corn.
The problem of antibiotic use in animals falls into the class of long-term abstract hazards that democracies cannot solve. Democracy can solve only those problems that are concrete and short-term painful.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I, too, base my health maintenance plan on comedy routines.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Modern industrial cattle operations feed cows corn because calorie-for-calorie it is the cheapest food available for cows. The problem is that cows evolved to eat grass, not grains, so their stomachs aren't suited to it. They come down with stomach acidosis, and they will only live about six months once the corn diet begins.
Actually, it's more of a meat-per-acre argument. Cattle are often raised where there isn't enough land to let them graze, so they have to be fed with imported (read: more rural) food. Feeding them grass isn't feasible because the raw tonnage of grass would cost too much to transport, so they resort to corn (calorie/weight). In more rural areas, they are fed grass (every farmer I personally know).
People who think our ingestion of antibiotics from animals is a factor in antibiotic resistance are crackpots who don't pay attention to the fact that we've been eating trace amounts of penicillin for tens of thousands of years.
Trace amounts are not the concern. Cows are fed much more than "trace amounts" of bacteria. Therein lies the problem.
People who think our ingestion of antibiotics from animals is a factor in antibiotic resistance are crackpots who don't pay attention to the fact that we've been eating trace amounts of penicillin for tens of thousands of years.
Trace amounts are not the concern. Cows are fed much more than "trace amounts" of bacteria. Therein lies the problem.
I meant "cows are fed more than trace amounts of antibiotics." Too fast on the submit button.
Exactly my point, hence the concerns I outlined.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
My family has been battling MRSA for quite a while now. That shit is a bitch. Now another super bug on the loose?
I tell you what folks. Think the Black Plague. It's only a matter of time. Science turns out some wonderful things, but you can't fix stupid people. Seriously, do we believe we can beat Mother Nature? Look at gen mod crops, the pests are already adapting. We might winning for now, but we're going to loose big some day.
Have a nice day!
The last "line drugs" are surely nasty. I was hospitalized for a week with a systemic staph. infection I got via a brush burn at my grappling school. At the time, I was given vancomycin. I think it was _the_ last resort drug at the time. I was told this has now been trumped by newer antibiotics due to vancomycin resistant infections.
It is also worthy to note that this had to be administered intravenously, which means the resistant strains emerging would not be related to doctors prescribing oral antibiotics. The intravenous modality of these drugs decreases the occurrence of over-prescribing. This drug would quickly "ruin the site" as they said in the hospital, which meant the intravenous entry point had to be relocated frequently.
There was a wired article a while back about the amount of antibiotics used by farm animals in the US:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/news-update-farm-animals-get-80-of-antibiotics-sold-in-us/
I would imagine this is a potentially good place to start reducing the amount of antibiotics being used. I'm no biologist, but prophylactic antibiotic use on this scale is probably unnecessary. Don't count on the farming industry to do this on their own though....
-ted
Exactly my point, hence the concerns I outlined.
Oh, I re-read your post:
People who think our ingestion of antibiotics from animals is a factor in antibiotic resistance are crackpots who don't pay attention to the fact...
I thought you were referring to animal ingestion. Carry on, we are in agreement.
I was sent a TED Talk which touches on antibiotic resistance not too long ago. It was a study about how bacteria communicate with each other, and the ways in which you could stop that communication all together. It's incredibly interesting, and may solve the problem of antibiotic resistance all together if something really comes of it.
The talk was almost 3 years ago now. Does anyone know anything about this research?
Bonnie Bassler on how bacteria "talk"
Comprehensive solutions via a competition of ideas like no other.
Probably because in the EU it's been banned (since 2006 for growth promotion purposes).
It looks like said ban is not being followed (or being worked around), at least in Germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,797970,00.html
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Posting this kind of absurd fiction only helps discredit the very real problems caused by overfeeding with grains. A six-month death sentence?
The problem began with New Deal-era crop subsidies. Naturally, every progressive treats government power like violence (if it doesn't work, just use more of it) and instead of removing the subsidies, they want to tax the meat or corn and thus continue to cause hardship.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Posting this kind of absurd fiction only helps discredit the very real problems caused by overfeeding with grains. A six-month death sentence?
The problem began with New Deal-era crop subsidies. Naturally, every progressive treats government power like violence (if it doesn't work, just use more of it) and instead of removing the subsidies, they want to tax the meat or corn and thus continue to cause hardship.
I agree that crop subsidies are teh stupid, but the corn health problems are real. In addition to acidosis, corn-fed cows have problems with liver failure from (corn) aflotoxin concentration, as well as founder and ulcers. It's not a secret either, just do some googling.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
The article misrepresents the position - antibiotics don't "encourage bacteria to develop new ways of overcoming them", they just leave behind bacteria that have more resistance. It's therefore very important to go Darth Sidious on their ass and "wipe them out. All of them.", or the few that remain will multiply, unobstructed by their cream-puff peers who are all dead now.
Yes, the parent post makes an important point -- at least, the chance of fostering resistant bacteria is higher if a treatment course with antibiotics leaves any of the bacteria still alive, which might happen if the course was too short, or if the dose was not high enough to reach lethal concentration for the bacteria in some place in the body that the bacteria were using as a hideout, with poor blood circulation (e.g. sometimes tooth or bone). Then the surviving bacteria descended from those exposed to sublethal dose _may_ have more resistance.
There's a problem, though, with existing stories of how to discourage the growth of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. The stories tend to concentrate on human antibiotic prescriptions, while they often ignore the role of the enormous use of antibiotics for non-human animals, especially in agriculture. Human physicians sometimes forget the veterinary role in causation. Some of them are so ideologically 'taken' with the message 'be restrained in your prescriptions' that I have seen a patient who really needed antibiotic actually refused it on environmental grounds. She got sicker and sicker until another physician acted at last with some common sense, and then (thankfully) the effect of the medication was as dramatic as in the early accounts of antibiotics from the mid-20th c. when their use first spread.
-wb-
I don't remember the source, it's been a while, but I read an online newspaper article about how prevalent NDM-1 is in India. This was hinted at in the article: people coming from India to Europe, bringing that with them. Basically, researchers have found gut flora with the NDM-1 gene in it. Which might actually be good for not killing off your intestinal flora with antibiotics (which I personally did and was f'd for years until I took probiotics). But more importantly, they've found strains of polio and all sorts of other nasty diseases that are mostly nonexistent nowadays (or at least not causing mass epidemics anymore) with the NDM-1 gene. Ie. there already are (or will be soon) strains of every nasty disease that can kill millions of people, all resistant to every antibiotic currently known to man, floating around in the Delhi sewers. I'd like to recommend everyone buy Maitake mushroom pills or grow them yourself. They're immune system boosters. For a couple years now, I've nipped in the bud about 95% of all sicknesses I've got, be it the flu or a cold, by just taking a few of these pills as soon as I feel the symptoms coming on. Fever, nausea, sore throat? Not a problem if I take these early on. They don't work as well if you're already well into the sickness.
Naturally, every progressive treats government power like violence
flag down - unnecessary use of simile.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Virtually *everything* we eat has traces of penicillin in it.
That's an exaggeration. I'd be willing to believe that everything we eat has traces of penicillum fungus on it -- almost -- but not all penicillum produces penicillin. To get penicillin in quantities that have meaningful antibiotic effects requires special environmental conditions -- hence why the people who cultivated it were awarded the Nobel prize.
Breakfast served all day!
You, kind sir, need to watch "I Am Legend" again. We do NOT want that sort of incident happening again. I've been through that kind of terror. A lot of beautiful women that MAY have slept with a computer geek died. We were left with less women, all terrified by computer geeks because they are just as scared of the sun as the zombie guys in the movie.
Perhaps it's a different medical culture here, or a different culture in general - in Nordic countries we generally try to go for consensus on important issues as a wide cultural preference whenever possible.
Here in the US, we generally try to go for consensus on important issues as a wide cultural preference as well. Except, then we do the exact opposite of whatever said consensus might be.
No. Cows fed antibiotics grow faster, for reasons that aren't fully understood. That is the main reason they are used.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Do you drink milk?
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
And no mention whatsoever of Norway's successful program... http://www.reporternews.com/news/2010/jan/01/norway-cuts-antibiotics-successfully-battles/
A) It isn't indiscriminate
B) it's far less then an actual dose
C) there is no evidence it has cause any mutation
D) misuse of antibiotic is the primary cause for mutation.
I get it, it seems like that much given to cattle would impact it. But when you find out how little it is on a real metric, weight of the cow, and the 90% of the into amount given to the cow is pissed right back out, you will realize that it's really not an impact on anything regrading mutations.
The remain 10% is use to reduce the amount of bacteria in the gut so the cow absorbed a high percentage of the food. so it's used up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No. no antibiotic is in the final product. It's been pissed out or used up.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Another way to look at this is that antibiotics are a short-term imbalance on a nature's long-term balance. In the short time (since the 1930s) that antibiotics have existed, we have managed to push back against bacteria. In the long term, organisms develop defenses against pathogens, and the pathogens develop ways around the defenses. We can expect that nature, with its huge numerical advantage (many microbes vs very few antibiotics), will eventually find evolutionary pathways around our defenses.
You are willfully ignorant. None of the common drug resistant bacteria originate in the third world. Most are drug resistant strains of bacteria that everyone carries every day. Antibiotics are expensive and in short supply in most of the third world, so it would be difficult for drug resistant strains of 3rd world bacteria to evolve to threaten Europe. You can't blame this one on the non-arians.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Every adaptation to antibiotics makes the bacteria that much weaker and less efficient in general. Maybe if we can come up with enough of them our bodies will be so much better able to fight them off naturally that it won't be a worry anymore.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
this should get +1 insightfull or Informative.
I think it's time to seriously consider Phage therapy, which has been proven reliable and used for years already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
I have recently been studying permaculture and one thing I have learned is how interconnected everything is in nature. Even (and especially) if antibiotics work perfectly they still make us more open to infection because of biodiversity concerns. The same occurs with insecticide use in fields, for example-- insecticides are the surest way to ensure that pests don't get predators.
There are a number of pathogens which most of us carry (Candida albans for example, which is a yeast responsible not only for feminine yeast infections but also for more serious digestive yeast infections which can affect either sex) which cause many more problems in people who have had antibiotics within the previous year than those who have not, and the reason is the pathogen is a yeast which has to compete with bacteria..... you kill the bacteria and guess what happens?
Antibiotics have no doubt saved many lives, but we are all better off (individually and collectively) if they are saved for where they are really life-saving and as a last resort.
It's not just the numerical advantage. It's the biodiversity issues as well, and how we end up killing the very things that protect us in the same process.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
A) It isn't indiscriminate
Yes it is. Antibiotics are fed to healthy livestock as a preventative measure.
B) it's far less then an actual dose
Which is far worse. The proper way to use antibiotics is to use a large dose to kill all bacteria before any have a chance to adapt.
C) there is no evidence it has cause any mutation
CBC Marketplace did a study of antibiotic resistant bacteria in chicken. Two thirds of 100 samples were contaminated by bacteria, all of which were resistant to at least one antibiotic. Most were resistant to at least five.
D) misuse of antibiotic is the primary cause for mutation.
And this is a gross misuse of antibiotics.
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I already had a patient, who was Mexican, with resistant Klebsiella with a bad knee infection.
Had to amputate his leg, as it was killing him. He's doing better now.
I have a remote, but not too distant fear, of having to practice medicine, specifically surgery, without the benefit of antibiotics. That would probably mean a near end to most elective surgery and huge decrease in average life scan. No more total joint replacements, vein bypasses, organ transplants, etc.
..........FULL STOP.
That's partly the point. You can get trace quantities of penicillin's eating just about everything. Those are not nearly high enough to have meaningful antibiotic effects and so there is no natural selection at work in the bacteria. (Interestingly I am allergic to *some* medical penicillins but have no trouble with others-- penicillin G gives me hives, amoxycillin does not, and I can eat blue cheeses without problems.)
The issue is that *consumption* of trace quantities of antibiotics is not the issue. The problem is the simple fact that we are feeding them to the animals in these doses.
Interestingly in ancient Egypt, moldy bread was used as a topical antibiotic, which strikes me as quite interesting. Similarly it looks like the Chinese used various common molds to treat skin infections as well.
The reason, however, that penicillin antibiotics even work at all today, as you point out is that sufficient quantities to provide antibiotic effects does not commonly occur in nature.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Yes, I am aware of the fact that biotin deficiency is connected to raw egg consumption. However, as I understand it, it is commonly found only in those who regularly eat raw eggs in sufficient doses. Having a dessert once a year that's basically raw egg yolks and powdered sugar spooned onto cookies is pretty harmless nutritionally. Same with mousse containing small amounts of raw eggs, or occasional homemade egg not. Unless you eat them all the time, that is.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Doctors know how to prevent MRSA infections, is this any different?
Those are seriously useful tips. of course, i will do some reading first before indiscrimately applying them, but you are probably correct. heat, salt, alcohol, our own immune system: pretty good stuff, not easy for bacteria to evolve defenses against. like cedar oil against insects, the cedar tree has had strong motivation for millions of years to keep bugs away, and it works.
You hear about the person who didn't rely on anecdotal evidence to support his belief system?
reassuring to us, maybe, but if germs could think, they would be all "wow, 25% of our target population has no clue that they are sitting ducks for our assault. our enemy is doing our work for us. relax, weve won this war before its started!" as a species, we are basically stupider than bacteria on an aggregate scale. we are actively, in a multitude of arenas, destroying ourselves. overpopulation, religious fundamentalism, nuclear power, global warming, gun manufacturing as a major force in politics, just enough science education to harm ourselves, uncontrolled male aggression, uncontrolled female acceptance of male aggression, antibiotics overuse, deforestation, technology that promotes ADD symptoms... well, i could go on much longer. its a sunny day out, ill try to enjoy one more day on earth while i can.
You hear about the person who didn't rely on anecdotal evidence to support his belief system?
Which is kind of stupid. I'm a creationist, but at least I recognize the difference between evolution and abiogenesis.
They just call it microevolution. As far as I can tell, microevolution means 'changes fast enough for us to observe first-hand.' Mainstream biology doesn't recognise any distinction: Evolution is evolution, whether it happens over weeks in bacterial populations or over hundreds of millions of years. It's just on a different scale.
solved
1.
I have used sterilized kitchen knives to lance the infection
Remind me never to eat at your house ;), and
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because it's easier than teaching people to soak infected fingers in hot salt water
I think you typoed "more profitable". Simple mistake to make, the keys are right next to each other.