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Science

Antibiotic Resistant Staph Infections 91

Posted by michael from the gorillas-to-eat-the-snakes dept.
oliphaunt writes "This! morning! at! Yahoo! there! is! a! story! about! drug-resistant! bacteria! This is interesting because, as of July 5 of this year, "It was the first case of vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the United States." Nobody can PROVE it of course, but this is probably a result of overprescription of antibiotics, and people not following doctor's directions, combined with stuff like antibiotic hand soap available over the counter. So what do we do when the bugs are resistant to everything we have? The answer is we die."
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Antibiotic Resistant Staph Infections More

Antibiotic Resistant Staph Infections

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  • The answer is we evolve to resist them as we have for hundreds of thousands of years. Don't get me wrong, artifical defenses are great, but it's only been the last century or so that's had us relying on them so much.
    • I don't know. Relying on evolution is so last epoch!

      Now germ-line genetic engineering; now you're talking!

    • We evolve at a rate much slower than bacteria. I frankly don't want to wait for 10,000 years before humans evolve enough to resist staph infections.
    • Evolution happens primarily through death, or at least failure to reproduce.

      Are you volunteering?

      • No it doesn't dipshit. Evolution happens through mutation.
        • Darwinian evolution happens through the survival of the fittest. Mutations don't magically point the species in the right direction. Most mutations are bad for you. Evolution requires that people with bad mutations die (or don't breed) and people with good mutations live (or breed a lot).
          • That's a rather simplistic view of evolution. Evolution of a species does not require survival of the fittest ... it only requires survival. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as heriditary diseases. Additionally, how do you define a "bad mutation". Consider the classic example of the relationship between sickle cell anemia and malaria. (For those not in the know, survivors of sickle cell anemia have a high degree of resistance to malaria ... you can find the reason for this in most biology text books. ) As I said in another post, death and reproduction are influences on evolution, but they don't cause it. Evolution is however a direct result of mutation, even if a large percentage of those mutations result in mortality.
    • Unfortunatly, humans are no longer evolving.

      1) Our population combined with its transience is to great. In order to evolve effectively, there has to be a small enough population that the beneficial mutation will make a difference. Unfortunatly, with all 6 billion of us, that mutation is likely to just get lost in the enormous gene pool. Now, I suppose you could quarantine people into blocks within which were the only people they were allowed to mate with, but there are so many things wrong with that that I doubt it will happen. (I for one would be against it)

      2) We can only evolve to get better at being 0-30 years old (roughly). This is because as long as we survive long enough to reproduce, evolution has served its purpose. This means that we can't evolve to get better at getting old, nor can we evolve to become resistant to diseases that affect us after we reproduce.

      So in order for evolution to provide a viable solution to this problem, first we would have to have a plague that wipes out 90% of the people on this planet, and even then evolution wouldn't be able to help anyone much past 30 years old. If this is what you call a viable solution to the problem of super-bugs, then go for it.

      I'm still waiting for nanotech that can be injected into our bloodstream and go around physicallyy combating the bacteria :-)
    • Only problem is that bacteria can evolve a lot quicker than we can. Hospitals are a breeding ground for these new strains, and are some of the most dangerous places to work in the world. It is ironic that hospitals, places designed to help people, often end up spreading horrible infections around.

  • We Die?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hell O'World ( 88678 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @02:28PM (#4321611)
    Now we know what killed the dinosaurs, antibiotic soap!

  • Poor fellow (Score:4, Insightful)

    by m_chan ( 95943 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @02:31PM (#4321646) Homepage
    The patient, a 40-year-old Michigan man with diabetes, seems to have caught the bug off an infected catheter inserted while he was in the hospital for the amputation of a gangrenous toe

    Suddenly I realize that I am not having such a bad day after all.
    • Just makes you wonder where that catheter had been!
    • If this guy caught the infection in the hospital, how could antibiotic soaps or failing to follow doctor's directions have been contributing factors, especially given the rarity and strength of vancomycin?
      • Particularly if he picked it up off of a catheter. Maybe I'm not following the instructions, but I'm not currently rinsing out my urethra with antibacterial Dial.

      • Re:Poor fellow (Score:3, Informative)

        by jspey ( 183976 )
        If this guy caught the infection in the hospital, how could antibiotic soaps or failing to follow doctor's directions have been contributing factors, especially given the rarity and strength of vancomycin?

        What happens is first- and second-line antibiotics, like penicillin, get overused. This creates many different strains of bacteria all over that are antibiotic resistant. If you get sick with one of these superbugs and can't shake it off on your own then you go to the hospital and get vancomycin. Since so much vancomycin has to be used in hositals it stands to reason that eventually one strain of bacteria will evolve that's immune to it. If there weren't so many strains of bacteria that were immune to penicillin there wouldn't be as much of a need to use vancomycin as much, resulting in fewer strains of vancomycin.

        BTW, hospitals of full of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, due both to all the antibiotics used there and to all the people that go there with antibiotic resistant strains ofbacteria already in them.

        Mr. Spey
        • What happens is first- and second-line antibiotics, like penicillin, get overused.

          Woudn't this be somewhat regional, though? I mean, especially here in the Los Angeles area, where Mexico can be reached within a few hours' drive, one can pretty much go to Tijuana and get the drugs of their choice without an Rx. For that matter, one can go to various clinicas in (say) Santa Ana and get those amongst other drugs that are otherwise not available without a prescription. I know there are many cases of people taking amoxicillin for sheer placebo effect (yes, they actually think the amoxicillin is going to kill the viral infection!), but I kind of think that it's largely by accessibility.

          Think of it, unless you beg and plead of your doctor (who, if he's worth his salt, will give you a true placebo instead), you're not going to legally get penicillin OTC in (say) Iowa.

          • Woudn't this be somewhat regional, though?

            It would be if there wasn't so much travel. It's very easy to be a carrier for a bacteria even if you have no symptoms. One person could easily make 10 or 20 people contagious, and each of them could make 10 or 20 contagious, etc. One of them traveling to NYC could get the entire east coast.

            Mr. Spey
      • It's not a major problem that he gets infected, it's a major problem that there are no antibiotics left that will kill the bacteria.
        Every time someone uses an antibiotic to kill bacteria, there's chance that some of them are resistant for that antibiotic. This will create an evolutional process where the surviving bacteria are all resistant to antibiotics. The only way to prevent it is to only use antibiotics when needed.

        So the only thing this fellow might have left is to trust on his own defense system to kill the bacteria.
  • This is the natural order of things. The strongest things survive, nature will find a way. HIV isn't killing as many people as it should so nature is developing a new device to thin out the human population.
    • The strongest things survive

      No, the fittest things survive. In evolutionary biology, fitness is defined as the ability to pass on your genes. This may be related to strength. It may not.

      nature is developing a new device

      Nature is developing nothing. There is no consciousness guiding the development of these organisms.

  • vancomycin resistance does not come from hand soap (Score:3, Informative)

    by aminorex ( 141494 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @02:35PM (#4321690) Homepage Journal
    there is zero evidence to link resistance to
    vancomycin (an extremely rare antibiotic, used only
    in cases of desperation) to the use of hand soap.
    in my opinion the body of this article is
    sensationalistic hogwash.

    vancomycin resistance can come from serendipity,
    from vancomycin exposure, or from a mechanism which
    creates a much broader resistance to a class of
    antibiotics which includes vancomycin, subsequent
    to exposure to other antibiotics in that class.
    hand soap is not in any structurally related class.
    • See my previous post [slashdot.org], since I don't want to repeat myself too much.

      The short version is antibiotic hand soap breeds bacteria that are immune to that type of antibiotic. Since there are only three or four different types of antibiotics out there, breeding a resistant strain from hand soap means the strain is also immune to an entire type of antibiotic, so if you have a staph infection and use the soap you could get a strain of staph resistant to whatever particular antibiotic is in the soap. If someone else living in the same household gets infected with this new resistant strain of staph, they can't be helped by an entire type of antibiotic, focing the use of second- or third-line antibiotics. And the only way to breed a resistant strain is to use an antibiotic on it.

      Hmmm ... I guess I just repeated myself a bunch. Oh well.

      Mr. Spey
      • only three or four different types of antibiotics

        Bollocks. There are only three or four different classes of antibiotics, but many more types. The classification of antibiotics groups them according to the way in which they interfere with the bacteria, but resistance to one member of a class doesn't result in resistance to other members of the class under most circumstances.

    • Re:vancomycin resistance does not come from hand s (Score:5, Informative)

      by tid242 ( 540756 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @04:08PM (#4322536) Homepage
      well although i agree with your spirit, i do not agree with your facts...

      vancomycin (an extremely rare antibiotic, used only in cases of desperation)

      this is what vanco is supposed to be, but in fact it is used quite frequently, and is actually gaining popularity given that virtually every major medical centre in the US is now seeing the prevalence of MRSA going through the roof (as MRSA is resistant to pretty much everything except for vanco, linezolid (Zyvox) and dalfopristin/quinupristin (Synercid)). vanco is now the drug of choice in many institituitions until lab sensitivities come back, at which time a patient with a staph infection may be switched to something else or remain on vanco. with infectious disease health care providers simply cannot afford to prescribe nafcillin and wait a day for labs to come back and tell them whether or not the organism is resistant, so they prescribe vanco first and modify later (and you would too if you were on the east coast and 1 in 3 staph infections were nafcillin resistant)...

      furthermore:
      vancomycin resistance can come from serendipity, from vancomycin exposure, or from a mechanism which creates a much broader resistance to a class of antibiotics which includes vancomycin, subsequent to exposure to other antibiotics in that class

      there are currently no antibiotics on the market in use with the same mechanism of action (MOA) of vanco (which is a glycopeptide cell wall inhibitor). the Penicillins/cephalosporins are cell wall inhibitors of a different nature, and do not promote resistance to vancomycin directly, although ceftazidime (Fortaz) independently causes an increased incidence of VRE (Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus (not the same as staph a)) for reasons unbeknownst to the medical/research community. Likewise aminoglycosides, flouroquinolones, macrolides, et al. also do not increase the incidence of vancomycin resistance in and of themselves. however all of these compounds increase the selective pressure on organisms, thus favoring strains that more easily acquire resistance than their counterparts... But contrary to your point most of the time when you hear about cross-resistance they're talking about resistances to drugs in the same class or with the same mechanism of action such as all beta-lactams (pens & cephs), all aminiglycocydes (gent, tobra, amikacin), all flouroquinolones (levofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, gatifloxacin, etc) and the like, but this isn't something that normally happens with outliers such as vanco, zyvox, synercid, rifampin, etc.

      just as an aside (but of interest), the CDC labels VISA/GISA as staph a with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of vanco to be greater than 8mcg/mL, and VRSA to be greater than 32mcg/mL. When one does pharmacokinetic dosing for vanco, by the book one looks for a peak serum vanco concentration of 20-40mcg/mL, and a trough of 5-15mcg/mL (usually broken down to 5-10 for normal infections and 10-15 for serious concentrations.) But in real life people don't even look at the peaks (it doesn't improve outcomes and costs too much to do if it doesn't help), just the troughs, and as you probably know vancomycin is a time-dependent killer (like the beta-lactams (with the exception of the carbapenems of course) and macrolides) so a range of 8-32mcg/mL for an intermediate strain won't necessarily tell you if it will work in a clinic, especially since many infections are in areas with poor circulation (necrosed tissue etc) in which the drug levels won't be anything near what they are in the plasma (due to poor tissue perfusion). And thus the distinction between VRSA and VISA/GISA are more of scientific/epidemiological significance than of actual clinical significance (especially if you've only got a vanco peak of 20mcg/mL and your MIC is 25 for the strain). And if you're just looking for hard-to-treat cases of Staph a, then this news is nothing new...

      -tid242

      • Woohoo! Someone finally posted something worth reading. Thank you. If I remember correctly, Vancomycin uses a completely unique, if somewhat brutish approach to inhibiting cell wall formation. Whereas penicillin and similar antibiotics typically block the active sites of enzymes responsible for cell wall formation, Vancomycin physically inhibits cell wall formation by attaching to the partially formed glycopeptide cell wall. This requires fairly large amounts of vancomycin. Unfortunately, vancomycin has some pretty nasty side effects. I believe that's a significant reason why it's a last resort drug. Resistance against this particular antibiotic is truly scary when you consider the mutations that must have occurred for the bacteria to develop resistance against it. We're not talking single point mutations here. God help us if these sort of fundamental mutations are occuring in other infectious agents.
    • there is zero evidence to link resistance to

      vancomycin (an extremely rare antibiotic, used only
      in cases of desperation) to the use of hand soap.

      point taken. But like I just responded to someone else, it's an arms race. Penicillin was overprescribed in the 40's and 50's, people didn't understand that they had to take all the pills, for the whole 12 days, and now 30% of strep pneumoniae bugs are penicillin resistant, and that's in all patients, not just those who have been cross-contaminated in hospital environments. [nih.gov] I challenge you to find public numbers for hospital environments- I bet Kaiser Permanente is going out of their way to keep those stats off the Net.

      handsoap is the same thing, on a wholly different scale. What happens when Triclosan stops working, because every bacterium on the planet has been exposed to some base level, and have developed resistance? People still want to buy antibacterial soap, right? So we'd better start putting a stronger chemical in the soap. Lather, rinse, repeat.

      Maybe it's over the top to suggest that you'll be able to buy vanco soap over the counter in 50 years- but maybe it won't do you much good by then.

  • Antibiotic soap? Probably not... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @02:37PM (#4321712) Homepage
    It's more likely to be related to the 'growth promoters' fed to cattle. That's a really bad idea.

    Anyway, there are other things we can do. Phage is always there in our armoury, and unlike antibiotics, bacteria have little chance of out evolving it...

    (For those not in the know, Phage is the name given to viruses that have coevolved with bacteria. The idea is that you hunt around for a virus that kills the bacteria and spray the viruses around and the bacteria is killed. It seems to work... the Russians use it sometimes, it's cheaper than antibiotics.Viruses mutate faster than bacteria can.)

    • Not just cattle, but chickens are also fed antibiotics from the day they hatch. That way they grow faster and breed resistant bacteria. They have found bacteria in the human population that were resistant to antibiotics not yet approved for humans.

      The gain for the farmers is small, but measurable. The cost to the population as a whole is huge, but few people seem to care.

      And I agree, antibiotic soap isn't much of a problem.

    • Re:Antibiotic soap? Probably not... (Score:4, Informative)

      by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @03:22PM (#4322139) Journal
      More information is appropriate here.

      What WolfWithoutAClause was talking about is called bacteriophage therapy. A bacteriophage is a type of virus that attacks bacteria. ("Bacteriophage" literally means bacterium eater.) Bacteriophages were discovered in 1917. In the 1920's and 1930's, bacteriophages were used to treat bacterial infections like typhus and cholera. The results were very mixed.

      In the 1940's, bacteriophage therapy fell out of favor as penicillin became more and more popular.

      Recent studies of bacteriophage therapy in Eastern Europe and in Asia have tentatively concluded that it can, when properly employed, approach the effectiveness of antibiotic therapy.

      But there is a problem. Bacteriophages and antibiotics work in pretty much the same way, albeit through different mechanisms: the agent in use attacks the bacteria population present in the patient, killing all those that are susceptible. Neither antibiotics nor bacteriophages kill 100% of the bacterial infection, because bacteria mutate and evolve quite rapidly. If bacteriophage therapy were in as widespread use as antibiotic therapy is today, we'd see the same basic problems: resistant strains appearing thanks to therapeutic culling of the susceptible populations.
      • Yes, but the difference is that the bacteriophage may be able to evolve to be more effective, and fairly quickly; and we may able to help it along too. The antibiotics can't evolve, and that's the problem.
      • Bacteriophages and antibiotics work in pretty much the same way, albeit through different mechanisms: the agent in use attacks the bacteria population present in the patient,

        not to mention they'd be highly antigenic (much moreso than the antibiotic haptens people are oft allergic to), which would provide a major problem in repeat-treatment...

        damn, didn't see your post before i posted my last one, guess i could do a little more RTFMing before posting eh? :)

        -tid242

    • It's more likely to be related to the 'growth promoters' fed to cattle. That's a really bad idea.

      It is a really bad idea to be sure, but vanco resistance doesn't arise directly from cattle feed, as you'd have to be crazy to put vanco in there as vanco has a 0% oral bioavailability (0% absorbed)... although you're right, if it was in there it would because it's still be in their manure and get sprayed around on crops etc, etc...

      Phage is probably short for "Bacteriophage" which is just a virus (it's the one in high-school science books that looks like some sort of a phallic lunar-lander) that infects bacteria. yes bacteriophages do kill bacteria from time to time, but ironically are one of the primary vectors in spreading resistance genes from one bacterium to another... probably not the strain the Russians use though if it's highly bacteriocidal, :)

      -tid242

  • Just like individual freedom is every man's responcibility, so is health.

    Do you know how much antibiotics are put into your milk and meat? Those hormones and antibiotics put into your food are also one of the reasons of obesity in the USA.

    It's just like fighting McDonalds- remember how we got them to switch from those nasty poly boxes?

    Well, it's time to let those dairy and milk producers know that we refuse to eat antibiotic and hormone contaminated food!

    It's only a matter of time untill a super-bug evolves. Aids is going to seem like kids' poo.

    You can help- call for not using antibiotics except when they are needed.

    Don't buy meat and dairy unless they are antibiotic and hormone-additives clear.

    Don't use antibacterial soap.

    And don't ask your doctor for an antibiotic pill to cure your cold or flu!It won't help anyway.

    Another thing to remember, is that you have to take the full one or two week course on treatment if you're ever prescribed antibiotics! Othervise, your bacteria become resistant.Even skipping one day is enough to let that hundred semi-resistant bacteria multiply into thousands,then millions. If you go for treatment, stick to it.
    • True, the EU is banning hormone-pumped meat from the US (and getting penalized by the WTO). But when it comes to antibiotics they are no saints either. In my country Denmark, Europe we've had big discussions about this. Veterinarians are no longer allowed to feed an animal antibiotics unless it is sick, but some farmers don't care, they have their own supply of drugs and injects all their animals with antibiotics two weeks after birth as it makes them gain more weight - just like hormones.

      Is this legal to do in the US ? Anybody know if it is illegal in all European contries ?

  • Soap industry opinion (Score:2, Informative)

    by ApharmdB ( 572578 )
    Triclosan is the active ingredient in the antibacterial hand soaps.

    From the Soap and Detergent Association:
    http://www.sdahq.org/health/faq.html [sdahq.org]

    One statement they make is "Washing with plain soap and water removes many germs from the hands. Antibacterial soaps contain an active ingredient that keeps the number of germs at a reduced level for an extended period of time, providing improved germ control."

    So don't let the advertising con you into thinking that plain soap has suddenly stopped working. Triclosan just makes your hands temporarily unsurvivable for germs. Everything is an issue of degrees, and this seems like using a scorched earth policy on your hands.

    Take it for what it's worth.
    • Actually, I like triclosan. It's unpretentious, and only mildly effective. Triclosan looks like one of the few good guys. It's not very effective, but effective enough. It's not harmful to humans, and there's been no known cases of evolution of bugs to beat it. Not so much scorched earth, more like gently toasted really.
    • I don't know how the industry uses these words, but they way I understand them, Antibacterial is usefull against bacteria type microorganisms. Whereas antibiotics specifically target specific microorganisms (bacteria, but also viruses, fungi...etc)

      IE, clorax is Antibacteria, but not Antibiotic.

      While i suppose when you throw all the permutations of evolution as a denominator of the probability it becomes 'possible' it's still, unlikely, that a super antibacterial resistent bacteria is going to be evolved by using antibacterial soap instead of other soap.

      Abuse antibiotics though, and we could be up the creek.
      • I think it's worth pointing out that most cleaners, like clorax, are antibacterial in a completely different way than all antibiotic drugs, in that they use chemicals like bleach to dissolve all the cells they come in contact with. That's why most of them say you should use gloves and whatnot when you use them. Anything that they're going to put in soap to kill bacteria will be something that doesn't harm people, making is a good candidate for antibiotic medicine.

        Mr. Spey

  • caffeine (Score:3, Funny)

    by DevilM ( 191311 ) <devilm@ d e v i lm.com> on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @03:15PM (#4322079) Homepage
    Anyone else think the poster has had a little too much caffeine?

  • That is quite a bummer (Score:4, Informative)

    by nelsonal ( 549144 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @03:17PM (#4322091) Journal
    I had a staph infection two years ago, and it really was a bummer. Happily it was just at the skin level or I would probably not be here now. We have known for quite a while that staph would eventually beat vancomycin, it was just a matter of time. That's why it was only used in the most dire cases, in the hope of extending the time before it became resistant. It didn't occur because of not following doctor's orders, since it would probably only be used under intensive care like conditions, with either IV or daily distributions of pills.
    Incidentally, new research has focused on interrupting the communication that Staph does to announce its population is large enough to attack. It doesn't attack right away but waits for numbers to be large enough to overwhelm the immune system. If it can either be triggered to attack before numbers are large enough, or never recieve the attack signal, staph infections would likely be dealt with by the immune system.
  • In one article I read on this topic, antibiotic resistance was described as an armor for the bacteria. The analogy was further extended to show that there is a metabolic cost for that resistance. In other words, all else being equal, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are less competitive than those without the resistance. It's just that when antibiotics are around, that resistance makes all of the difference.

    Antibiotics come in families, and a given family will work against bacteria in largely the same way. Imagine if we could take an entire antibiotic family out of use around the world for some period of years.

    As mentioned earlier antibiotic resistance comes with a cost. If an antibiotic family is intentionally unused, under evolutionary pressure bacteria would now tend to drop their resistance. I have no idea how long it would take, but I'm sure it could be estimated by someone 'skilled in the art.'

    This would suggest a worldwide policy of antibiotic rotation. Of course doing anything on a worldwide basis is tough, as is telling someone to quit making money on penicillin-family antibiotics for a decade.
    • Of course doing anything on a worldwide basis is tough, as is telling someone to quit making money on penicillin-family antibiotics for a decade.

      Or as tough as telling someone who is allergic to penicillin to a life-threatening degree that other means of fighting an equally life-threatening disease are 'off-limits' until the next rotation period.
      • > Or as tough as telling someone who is allergic to penicillin to a life-threatening degree that other means of fighting an
        > equally life-threatening disease are 'off-limits' until the next rotation period.

        I would certainly hope that any rotation scheme would leave some sort of overlap to handle allergies, etc. My brother and son are allergic to penicillin, but there are numerous other antibiotics that they can take. Of course I don't know what the situation is with multi-allergic people.
    • depends on how important it is.

      TCP/IP seems to be pretty universally accepted.

      if it becomes a big enough problem somebody rich will pay to fix it ;)
    • This is a really thought-provoking idea. I don't think it could be implemented, but thanks for the idea.

      I do wonder if any one has checked out the prevelance of antibiotic resistant bacteria in a situation like an isolated, war-torn country that has not had a drug supply available (or outside visitors) for some time. In theory the bacteria would have lost unneccessary resistance genes, but it only takes one cell with the resistance gene to restart the cycle....

  • Mutation-proof antibiotics [jadecampus.com] derived from insect peptides are showing very promising progress. They're apparently unique to each insect species, meaning there's a huge range to work with and the level at which they attack bacteria means that defensive mutation would require hundreds of genes to act in concert, compared to the normal one or two required for resistance to enzyme blocking antibiotics.
  • Okay, take a deep breath.

    First off, your diabetic, sicky, infected, catheterized patient was pretty much on death's door anyway (and the staph my have been a blessing -- diabetics in that kind of condition often die, literally, by inches as the doctors cut gangrenous chunks off.)

    Second, there's more than one way to skin a cat, or a bacterium. "Augmentin", for example, is a common antibiotic that many bugs are immune to, augmented with an enzyme that blocks the mechanism that make the bacteria immune.

    It's also worth remembering that we survived for hundreds of thousands of years without antibiotics, anyway.

    • It's also worth remembering that we survived for hundreds of thousands of years without antibiotics, anyway.


      Are we forgetting about the plague that wiped out a good chunk of the human population just a few short centuries ago?

    • It's also worth remembering that we survived for hundreds of thousands of years without antibiotics, anyway.

      Yes - with an expected (adult) lifetime of about 35-40 and an infant mortality rate at well over 50%. I'd rather not come back to that 'idyllic' life.

  • Antibacterial and Antibiotic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by freerangegeek ( 451133 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @04:45PM (#4322819)
    There are lots of things that are 'antibacterial' without being an 'antibiotic'. Chlorox is certainly antibacterial, but it's not an antibiotic in the sense that a doctor prescribes.

    The compound used in most soaps, triclosan, isn't related to penecillin, erythromycin, etc. I certainly wouldn't recommend you eat Dial.

    So washing your hands with antibacterial Dial isn't going to doom you to death by vancomycin resistant staph.

    There are good reasons to avoid antibacterial soap, like killing of beneficial organisms, but don't confuse that with antibiotic resistant organisms caused by misuse of prescribed antibiotics.
  • My wife seems to be a staph carrier. It isn't strong. When she gets tested, she usually has 3 different strains in her system. If they give her drugs for it, then the next time they test her she has 3 different strains.

    The last big flare up occured in 1998 when I was sent to Calgary during my first wedding anniversary (I felt real bad after this.) She had a major flare up of staph A and was recordered for Galveston county. I look at the MMWR at the CDC and think of her when I see the staph #s. Anyway, the doctors had said they had not seen so many different staph infections in one person since college and then only in a text book.

    She's fine now and it's just as I said, they are all weak strains. I've never caught any from her, but she always has them.
  • My stepfather died Staphylococcus. It was not vancomycin-resistant, but it was enough to spread to his heart. While he was in the hospital, we encountered three people with the vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus bacteria next to his room (they thought that he had that, but it turned out he didn't)! This is deffenitely not the first case. I don't understand how they could say this. The doctors that were carring for him said that there were many cases in the US (a little over 20) and some cases overseas.

    One of the doctors thought that he was causing these infetions himself "using needles" and whatnot. This was, of course, not true, but I wonder how often this happens in these super bacteria cases.
  • Posters to this thread have seemed to miss the fact that a large part of the article was dedicated to environmental issues. Vancomycin is a naturally occuring drug. If my foggy memory serves me correctly, vancomycin is produced by a fungus located in Borneo. There is likely to be other naturally occuring antibiotics out there that we could lose forever due to the destruction of its location's habitat. Additionally, we are putting other species at risk through our unmitigated use of antibiotics. - Deep thoughts ... by funkmasterrapB

  • Unsurprising (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fluffy the Cat ( 29157 ) on Tuesday September 24, 2002 @07:37PM (#4323917) Homepage
    The number of bacteria on the planet is unimaginably huge. Bacteria are capable of passing genes between each other horizontally. As a result, you can effectively treat the entire bacterial population of the planet as a single gene pool. Given enough time, any beneficial mutation will pass from one end of the population to the other.

    Now, this is obviously a problem in terms of antibiotics. Many antibiotics are still generated from natural sources, and some fairly harmless bacterial species has probably developed immunity to that (by virtue of happening to live in the soil around the ferns that secrete it, for example). The genes providing that immunity can pass to pretty much ever other bacterial species on the planet. This isn't a rapid process, but it will be sped up by imposing additional selection pressure - for instance, treating bacteria with that antibiotic.

    Overuse or inappropriate use of antibiotics isn't really the trigger here. Imposing any degree of selection pressure will result in the same thing happening - it's only a matter of timing. More careful use of antibiotics may give us a few hundred years more if we're lucky, ten years more if we're not. The point to remember is that no matter how clever your antibiotic, there will be a gene in some bacterium somewhere that provides immunity to it. And, if you wait long enough, that will end up in the bacteria you're trying to kill.

    It's not an intractable problem. There's likely to (somewhere) be an enzyme that will digest your antibiotic, but if you develop something that degrades that enzyme you're back in business. The chances of a random bacterium having both the resistance and an unrelated gene that protects the resistance mechanism is the square root of the probability of it having the resistance alone (probably less - having the resistance is likely to have proven useful in nature, and so will be more popular. The probability of having both genes will therefore be corespondingly less), which gives us a fighting chance. New techniques in drug development are likely to mean that we can design new drgs that can defeat any resistance mechanism that turns up.

    Remember though, antibiotics have only been around for a hundred years or so. Humanity survived before then. Antibiotics increase average life expectency, but they're not required for continued human survival.

    My final year dissertation was on this topic. You can find a copy at www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~mjg59/resistance.pdf [cam.ac.uk] .

  • I think we are breeding a strain of super resistant-bacteria resistant human...

    "Stupid f*^$ing white man..." - Dead Man
    -grin-

    I've stopped buying antibacteria/antibiotic hand-soap. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger, right?
    • True on both points, however unpleasant/elitist/nazi they may sound.The development of an immune system was one of the greatest triumphs of evolution.

      As for the second point, a study conducted in the UK over the last five years concluded that children who had been overprotected, ie not allowed to get dirty or play outside, bathed frequently, had weaker immune systems and suffered from more illnesses than those with a less restrictive regime.

      Note: anyone reading this and trying to use it as an excuse to get muddy or not to bathe is probably too old to benefit!

  • A new (old in the Soviet Union) method of treating bacteria is being brought to market. Virii that infect bacteria and kill them while leaving animal tissue unaffected.

    I believe this will have the additional advantage of giving us an evolutionary advantage (by proxy) rather than the evolutionary disadvantage that we have right now. The bacteriophages will evolve with the bacteria to keep killing them, unlike antibiotics which must be created by human beings.

    Here [google.com] is a Google search that points to many pages about the workings of bacteriophages.

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