(xpost) The drugs don't work: what happens after antibiotics?

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/mar/24/the-drugs-dont-work-what-happens-after-antibiotics

The drugs don’t work: what happens after antibiotics?

Oliver Franklin-Wallis

Sun 24 Mar 2019 08.00 GMT

(snip)
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – the process of bacteria (and yeasts and viruses) evolving defence mechanisms against the drugs we use to treat them – is progressing so quickly that the UN has called it a “global health emergency”. At least 2 million Americans contract drug-resistant infections every year. So-called “superbugs” spread rapidly, in part because some bacteria are able to borrow resistance genes from neighbouring species via a process called horizontal gene transfer. In 2013, researchers in China discovered E coli containing mcr-1, a gene resistant to colistin, a last-line antibiotic that, until recently, was considered too toxic for human use. Colistin-resistant infections have now been detected in at least 30 countries.

“In India and Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, and countries in South America, the resistance problem is already endemic,” says Colin Garner, CEO of Antibiotic Research UK. In May 2016, the UK government’s Review on Antimicrobial Resistance forecast that by 2050 antibiotic-resistant infections could kill 10 million people per year – more than all cancers combined.

“We have a good chance of getting to a point where for a lot of people there are no [effective] antibiotics,” Daniel Berman, leader of the Global Health team at Nesta, told me. The threat is difficult to imagine. A world without antibiotics means returning to a time without organ transplants, without hip replacements, without many now-routine surgeries. It would mean millions more women dying in childbirth; make many cancer treatments, including chemotherapy, impossible; and make even the smallest wound potentially life-threatening. As Berman told me: “Those of us who are following this closely are actually quite scared.”
(snip)

In the early decades of antibiotics, resistance wasn’t a serious problem – we’d just find a new drug. After penicillin revolutionised healthcare on the battlefields of the Second World War, the pharmaceutical industry embarked on a golden era of antibiotic discovery. Companies enlisted explorers, missionaries and travellers from around the world to bring back soil samples in the hunt for novel compounds. Streptomycin was discovered in a field in New Jersey; vancomycin, the jungles of Borneo; cephalosporins from a sewage outlet in Sardinia.

But the golden age was short-lived. New discoveries slowed. Antibiotic compounds are common in nature, but ones that can kill bacteria without harming humans aren’t. Soon, big pharma companies began cutting funding to their antibiotic research departments before shutting them down altogether.
(snip)

There is still hope. In early 2015, researchers at Northeastern University in Massachusetts announced they had discovered a new class of antibiotics in a Maine field. Called teixobactin, it is produced by a newly discovered bacterium, Eleftheria terrae, and effective against a range of drug-resistant infections. Teixobactin was discovered by Slava Epstein and Kim Lewis, using an iChip, an ingenious device about the size of a USB chip designed to overcome a problem that has vexed biologists for decades: of the untold billions of bacteria in nature, only 1% of the species will grow in a Petri dish. “We came up with a simple gadget,” Lewis says. “You take bacteria from soil, sandwich it between two semi-permeable membranes, and essentially trick the bacteria.” So far the pair have identified around 80,000 previously uncultured strains using the device, and isolated several encouraging new antibiotics.

Teixobactin is particularly promising for a simple reason: to date, no bacteria have been able to develop resistance to it. “When we published the paper four years ago, a number of my colleagues wrote me emails saying: ‘Send me teixobactin, and I’ll send you back resistant mutants,’” Lewis says. “I’m still waiting.”
(snip)

[SoCalDem]

1. Nature's way of controlling population

we can only outsmart germs for just so long..

[LuvNewcastle]

3. If we won't do it ourselves, nature will do it for us.

It's a shame to let things come to this, but until we organize better and get a grip on out-of-control breeding, we will suffer the consequences.

[ck4829]

2. Antibiotic resistance is a solvable problem

But it will require innovation and regulation of the drug market.

As well as universal access regardless of money.

Here are some ideas:

Mix and match current antibiotics. Check out the -cilin name you see, we’ll have to combine the particular antibiotics in new ways. A bacteria could be resistant to two antibiotics separately, but if you were to combine them into a single treatment, that would present a new challenge to the bacteria.

Vaccines. That’s right, dreaded vaccines. By taking weakened or dead bacteria, we could feasibly create the same immune response that we see with viral vaccines. Our adaptive immune system will ‘remember’ bacteria and attack it. The tetanus shot? That's an example of this in action today with bacteria.

Phage therapy. There are viruses that specifically attack nearly every bacteria species. There is already some work being done, we can take these viruses and inject them into our bodies, they will destroy the bacterial infection and leave human cells alone. With their shorter RNA (not DNA), they can adapt faster than bacteria.

Biotechnology. The flagellum and mitochondria (Both components of the cell) were believed to be separate life forms that the eukaryote cell bonded with eons ago. What if we delved into this process, turning bacteria from a potentially deadly infection but into something our bodies could have a symbiotic relationship with instead?

[in2herbs]

4. Or you could take colloidal silver. It's proven to be the only med that kills MRSA. You are

ignorant if you think it will turn you blue. That only happened when massive doses were taken over a long period of time.

[OhNo-Really]

7. High grade Manuka Honey as well

but it has to be of the correct grade. Costco Manuka won't work according to research

Manuka Honey 25+ works. Here is empirical evidence

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4837971/

[in2herbs]

11. Absolutely with regards to Manuka honey at 18 or higher. However, for my horses it has a short

use span because once the weather gets hot the honey melts and is ineffective as a poultice. I have to use other remedies.

[OhNo-Really]

13. thats interesting. shave & duct tape a poultice?

[NRaleighLiberal]

8. colloidal silver is pure Woo - placebo effect at best if it works

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/expert-answers/colloidal-silver/faq-20058061

[in2herbs]

12. Like i said . . .

[Hestia]

5. Did y'all see the report from earlier this week about some special soil in Ireland that kills

ALL staph infections?

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/drug-resistant-superbugs-may-have-found-new-foe-irish-soil-n984016

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181227111427.htm

We have to keep drug companies from snagging this up and charging people $100k or some such nonsense.
New strains have to be grown in a lab in order to do it on a large scale.

[c-rational]

6. As a country we ignored climate change. We are also ignoring antibiotic resistance and continue

to feed livestock and chickens tons of it at our own peril (not to mention our 'farming' of animals is cruel, unjust and bad for the planet IMO). My gardener friend, a vegetarian keeps reminding me the same, there will be no more operations by 2050 at the rate we are going. We joke whether it would be best to live in a city of rural area at that time, if we were alive I understand the Europeans have stopped this practice of using antibiotics in feed. Why don't we follow - the power of the corporation..

[OhNo-Really]

9. Quantum physics is opening the door to treating "disease energy" w/"healing energy"

Not going deep into this except to say the "treat with drugs" paradigm is antiquated yet protected by big pharma propaganda.

Maybe not in our lifetimes, fellow elders, but todays youth will will have a new paradigm.

If you have Netflix, watch the documentary named "Heal"

It is an introduction to some great scientific breakthroughs that western medicine willmfight tooth and nail to disparage.

If you don't have Netflix, there are an array of 30+ vignettes from the documentary and its content. Just gonto youtube.com and search for "heal documentary" where you will see 3 video grouping, click on "show more" to find lots more.

I promise you this is serious science that I believe many of you already intuitively understand.

Just sit quietly for 10 minutes every day, let go of judgment, and listen.


https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC__96bafLCdVnpFe8BsFlug



✨✨🙏✨✨

Namaste
Shanti
Peace & Joy

[Brainstormy]

10. what the article doesn't even note

is that the most widespread use of antibiotics is in FOOD