Totally Drug-Resistant TB Emerges In India

ananyo writes "Physicians in India have identified a form of incurable tuberculosis there, raising further concerns over increasing drug resistance to the disease (abstract). Although reports call this latest form a 'new entity,' researchers suggest that it is instead another development in a long-standing problem. The discovery makes India the third country in which a completely drug-resistant form of the disease has emerged, following cases documented in Italy in 2007 and Iran in 2009."

Comments

Not *totally* drug resistant

[ArcherB]

We just haven't found a drug to fight it. And before people get on the anti-antibiotics bandwagon, if we didn't use antibiotics, then the simplest infection would be "Totally Drug-Resistant".

Now if you want to speak of the "overuse" or preventative use of antibiotics, then go ahead.

Re:Not *totally* drug resistant

[i kan reed]

There's no such thing as an anti-antibiotics bandwagon. Does not exist.

If you search for the phrase "ban antibiotics" you will ONLY find results for people opposed to agricultural antibiotic use on healthy animals. That's it.

There are enough stupid movements to hate without having to invent new ones.

Re:Not *totally* drug resistant

[wolfsdaughter]

The problem isn't using antibiotics to fight bacterial infections.

The problem is incorrectly using antibiotics, much of which comes from IGNORANCE and POVERTY
1) Ignorance: lack of education on how antibiotics work, and a frightening number of people stop taking the antibiotics as soon as they start feeling better - VERY BAD IDEA!

2) Poverty: medicines are expensive, and so people who are tight on money will "share" drugs, with other people to save on costs. This goes hand in hand with ignorance about how the drugs work.

The answer to this (and many other problems) is universal education and healthcare.

Re:Not *totally* drug resistant

[David Greene]

You misunderstand the problem. Antibiotics are not the problem. The overuse of antibiotics is the problem. I hear about this every single week from my wife, who is a provider. She constantly gets pressured by patients to prescribe antibiotics when they are clearly not necessary or justified. We have to change the culture of medical care here in the U.S.

Re:Not *totally* drug resistant

[Luckyo]

This is a silly claim. There are antibiotics that can kill most of the resistant bacteria. We know many of them. Problem is, they also kill the host when host is human, typically by destroying kidneys or liver.

It's not that we don't have the tools to kill these "super germs". We do. We just don't have the tools that kill the germs without killing the humans. Essentially we're paving the path for bacteria that adapt to antibiotics as a threat to their existence by remaining/becoming vulnerable to antibiotics that destroy various internal organs, and becoming resistant to those that do not.

Re:Not *totally* drug resistant

[Anonymous Coward]

They are *not* candy, some doctors prescribe them like they are and some patents demand them like they should be....

All antibiotics by their very nature disrupt the balance of the non aggressive bacteria which your body tolerates to produce extra essential vitamins in the gut and to cloud out the explicitly pathogenic varieties in the skin and elsewhere. This means that they come with a risk of skin rashes, minor stomach upsets gas and other such issues, particularly heavy use may cause more serious issues on occasion. Because of these issues you should only take antibiotics for real infections or serious wounds not colds or coughs, unless you have particular risk factors.

Despite these issues refusing them when you have a serious problem is madness, they are a powerful tool and a boon to our average lifespan and health that has not yet been equalled by any other single class of technology, wanting to cut unnecessary use to improve effectiveness and reduce risk is not the same as wanting to stop using them.

This would be a bad time for a "Madagascar" joke.

[Iamthecheese]

The only silver lining is that it's not even more deadly. At least we can learn about the effectiveness of quarantine methods in the modern era before something even more deadly shows up. Also each evolution that allows a bacteria to become resistant to a drug weakens the bacteria in all other cases.

Re:This would be a bad time for a "Madagascar" jok

[Samantha Wright]

I could ramble aimlessly about this general topic for a while, but instead to farm karma more efficiently I think I'll make an obscure, off topic point that I think is interesting by analogy: this directing of evolution also occurs at an environmental scale. Life may find ways to survive in the presence of all the chemicals we dump into the ecosystem, but it will be more vulnerable to other stressors as a result, including those through which it would normally survive. In combination with the on-going loss of diversity caused by more direct damage to the environment, life as we know it is pretty cornered.

It's a little as if we're extremely incompetent first-year med students trying to eliminate a patient's symptoms (i.e. the planet's inherent imperfection for supporting modern life) and we're on the verge of unintentionally killing off the infection that's actually responsible. (Admittedly, this is a lousy analogy, but it's important to realise that it's happening.)