Posted on 11/20/2015 4:13:13 PM PST by sparklite2
The world is on the cusp of a "post-antibiotic era", scientists have warned after finding bacteria resistant to drugs used when all other treatments have failed.
They identified bacteria able to shrug off the drug of last resort - colistin - in patients and livestock in China.
They said that resistance would spread around the world and raised the spectre of untreatable infections.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Before antibiotics, 90% of deaths were from infectious diseases. Now it is around 10%.
I am sure I read that somewhere but can’t guarantee it’s accuracy. Anyway, antibiotics have clearly had a tremendous impact.
There’s no such thing as “post-antibiotic”. There have simply been too many disincentives for pharma to discover/develop new ones.
Professor Jian-Hua Liu, from South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, said: “These are extremely worrying results. The polymyxins (colistin and polymyxin B) were the last class of antibiotics in which resistance was incapable of spreading from cell to cell.
“Until now, colistin resistance resulted from chromosomal mutations, making the resistance mechanism unstable and incapable of spreading to other bacteria.
“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 pan-drug resistance is inevitable.”
Being faced with an untreatable Dead-Maker should prove a marvelous incentive for focused research.
people do not take their antibiotics as prescribed...
people do not finish their regime of antibiotics when they start feeling "better"..
people take other peoples antibiotics instead of seeing the doc...
and people just think that going to the doc for "flu" or "virus" or sinus infections require antibiotics....
and so many "just in case" prescriptions for antibiotics for people that do not need them...
and we wonder why germs become resistant...
... said that resistance would spread around the world ...
-
Resistance does not spread; microorganisms spread.
“there has been NO disincentive for NOT prescribing antibiotics for flu and virus....”
All true, but all irrelevant as to why there are no new ones.
Reading post #4, the resistance can be passed between different kinds of bacteria, so in this case you could say resistance itself would spread.
I’ve heard from a dentist that ozonated water does well in place of anti-biotics.
I suspect that if antibiotics had not been discovered, other methods of treatment would have been developed.
I once read that a German Dr. developed a cure for Gonorrhea in the late 19th century using mercury. Since it was also dangerous, it was abandoned after antibiotics came into use.
you mean big pharma won't develop one for free ... just out of the goodness of their hearts ... and to please ms clintonista
so how YOU doin'? i'm dragging an O2 rig nowadays, the range treats me like the unibomber
“I’ve heard from a dentist that ozonated water does well in place of anti-biotics.”
true
There were a few successful methods of defeating bacteria, pre-antibiotic. They lost out due to cost and inconvenience. Might want to read up. Using silver or even copper for door handles, surfaces of tables, etc. was one, “environmental silver.” You see it today in clothing that is antimicrobial, it has literal silver thread woven into the fabric.
Interesting. I knew they used copper pipes for such things as refrigerator automatic ice makers because of it’s anti bacterial properties.
When I was a kid, Mother would treat impetigo with ammoniated mercury. It worked but I bet they would not allow it today.
We are seeing evolution in action. It isn’t random mutation. Life finds a way. Deal with it.
Mercury has it’s own set of problems on top of being antimicrobial. Along those same lines, I suspect we’ll rue the day that salt became “bad.” It’s an excellent preservative, and like most preservatives, it’s antimicrobial. Losing the salt in canned goods is going to make an outbreak of something nasty and food-borne more likely, imho.
I work with a woman whose son ended up with pneumonia and was put on a strong antibiotic. He then developed a bacterial infection in his stomach from it and had to get a drug that cost $1000 for the liquid cure or $55 in pill form This clearly demonstrates how resistant these bacteria have become. In my own case, I was on three rounds of antibiotics before I finally decided to stop taking them and started taking probiotics. The antibiotics made my head fuzzy, killed my appetite, and made me feel like I was having an out of body experience. And a number of my colleagues had similar symptoms.
Antibiotic resistant TB is the new plague.
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