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A Post-Antibiotic Future Is Looming (www.cbc.ca)

Posted by Soulskill on from the get-in-line-behind-all-the-other-dystopian-futures dept.

New submitter radaos writes: A gene enabling resistance to polymyxins, the antibiotics of last resort, has been found to be widespread in pigs and already present in some hospital patients. The research, from South China Agricultural University, has been published in The Lancet. According to research Jian-Hua Liu, "Our results reveal the emergence of the first polymyxin resistance gene that is readily passed between common bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Klesbsiella pneumoniae, suggesting that the progression from extensive drug resistance to pandrug resistance is inevitable." Work on alternatives is progressing — Dr. Richard James, former director of the University of Nottingham's center for healthcare associated infections, writes, "Until last month I was still pessimistic about our chances of avoiding the antibiotics nightmare. But that changed when I attended a workshop in Beijing on a new approach to antibiotic development based on bacteriocins – protein antibiotics produced by bacteria to kill closely related species, and exquisitely narrow-spectrum."

2 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Phage therapy, is it of limited use? by PeterM+from+Berkeley · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Phage therapy is essentially the use of viruses against bacteria. This seems like a wonderful idea and quite specific against specific bacteria.

    For antibiotics we often want something broad-spectrum, because it takes time and a lab test to determine what germ is causing the problem. Precious time and uncertain results from the lab test.

    So right off the bat phage therapy is less useful.

    I wonder right also if the human host would mount an immune response to the phages used, effectively defending the very bacteria that the phages were intended to attack. It's a foreign antigen, after all, even a virus, why WOULDN'T your immune system attack it?

    So might it be the case that phage therapy would only work once on a given person, for a particular phage?

    So I'm not sure phage therapy really would be an effective replacement for the antibiotics we used to have. Helpful, certainly, but of limited use, maybe?

    --PeterM

  2. Temporary moratoriums on certain antibiotics help? by PeterM+from+Berkeley · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maintaining antibiotic resistance is costly, and populations of bacteria which are not exposed to antibiotics will drop the capability after a while or be out-competed by competitors without the baggage.

    So maybe a world-wide complete ban on use of some of the older antibiotics that are now mostly useless would help? Bacteria resistant to those old antibiotics might become rare due to lack of selection pressure.

    Then, after 20 years of rest, maybe those antibiotics could be rotated back into use, because they've again become useful?

    --PeterM