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Science Technology

Soil Bacteria Show High Resistance to Antibiotics 149

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the armored-bacteria-testing dept.
Miraba writes "Microbiologists have found that soil-dwelling bacteria are highly resistant to antibiotics, even ones that they've never been exposed to before. While this information suggests that superbugs could arise from these bacteria, it also provides the opportunity for testing new techniques in drug development for the future."
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Soil Bacteria Show High Resistance to Antibiotics More

Soil Bacteria Show High Resistance to Antibiotics

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  • Another diet change (Score:5, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:33PM (#14528922) Homepage
    Beef is off the list thanks to Mad Cow. No chicken because of the bird flu. No pork because it'll be green and glowing soon. What fish? No genetically modified veggies or grain...

    And now I have to give up eating dirt! [wikipedia.org]

    I guess I'll become a Breatharian [wikipedia.org]...

    • And now I have to give up eating dirt!

      After reading that Wikipedia article, and the one linked to about.com: "it tastes nice", I can just see some posh restaurant in London serving up "gourmet" soil, giving it a really stupid and pretentious name, and — wait for it! — charging the Earth for the privilege.

      • And now I have to give up eating dirt!

        Bacteria might be resistant to antibiotics, but soap still kills them fine. All soap makes a great "anti-biotic", even the ones that don't say so. So if you still want to keep eating dirt, just wash your mouth out with soap - which would be a good idea in any case.

        After all, otherwise you're going to be talking dirty all the time :-)

        Now why anyone would want to eat dirt is beyond me. Is that what dirt farmers grow?

    • Re:Another diet change (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sen.NullProcPntr ( 855073 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @07:08PM (#14529091)
      It's not likely that the bacteria in question can infect you. Your insides are a very different environment than Canadian mud. (Otherwise anyone who got a cut while out gardening would die from infection.)

      According to TFA; the real danger is if the dirt bacteria cross with bacteria that can infect humans. They seem to imply that this is likely to happen and may have already happened (resistant staph infections).

      Why this would suddenly come to light may have more to do with research funding coming up than any real danger. After all humans have been around dirt for a long time.

      But I'm the suspicious type.

      So, go ahead and have another serving of dirt;-)

      • Re:Another diet change (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Like slashdotters, bacteria reproduce asexually. No chance of "crossing."
        • there are many ways of 'crossing', ie exchanging of genetic material - through viruses (transduction0, by free DNA(transformation), cell-to-cell contact + plasmid(conjugation).
          • there are many ways of 'crossing', ie exchanging of genetic material - through viruses (transduction0, by free DNA(transformation), cell-to-cell contact + plasmid(conjugation).

            Me gettin' my groove on(copulation), makin' love in the bedroom(ejaculation), etc.

      • Antibiotics haven't been around a long time, biologically speaking. So we have no way to know if the biosphere is stable to their "sudden" (over the last 50 years) introduction.

        The point is that dumping antibiotics into the biosphere, as we have been doing for 50 years, not just by treating infection but in animal feed, antibacterial soaps, et cetera, may be having just as large-scale and important effects as dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We don't know how fast the bugs are going to evolve
      • Otherwise anyone who got a cut while out gardening would die from infection.

        uhm, ever heard of tetanus?

    • You can cross out Breatharism off the list too due to the US pulling out and Canada planning on pulling out from the Kyoto Accord.

    • Re:Another diet change (Score:3, Informative)

      by Heembo ( 916647 )
      No pork because it'll be green and glowing soon.

      It's way worse than that - They are going to maike Pork TASTIER through generic engineering! You want to talk scarry? Check out this article: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/01/20/pig.gen ome.ap/ [cnn.com] "Researchers to map pig DNA"

    •  
      Underneath the bridge

      The tarp has sprung a leak

      And the animals I've trapped

      Have all become my pets

      And I'm living off of grass

      And the drippings from the ceiling

      It's ok to eat fish

      'Cause they don't have any feelings
       

  • Solution (Score:3, Funny)

    by quokkapox ( 847798 ) <quokkapox@gmail.com> on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:34PM (#14528925)
    Just thoroughly wipe down your dog|cat|kid with bleach when they come inside after playing in the backyard.

    Works for me...

    • Just thoroughly wipe down your dog|cat|kid with bleach when they come inside after playing in the backyard.

      Seriously, if you or your boyfriend are "playin in the backyard", you might just want to wipe yourself down with bleach too.
  • The specualtion about super bugs seems misplaced. So far antibiotics work quite well, albeit with limited lifespans of usefulness before resistance is induced. If dreaded "super bugs" were goinf to emerge from soils they would already exist or would have come about from these resistant bugs already. It has not happened.

    Taking a wild ass guess I would be unsurprised if it turned out that the reason soil based bugs show such resistance is because some other bug is already using this antibiotic and they had

    • Re: Suggests the opposite perhaps? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) * on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:43PM (#14528979)
      > Taking a wild ass guess I would be unsurprised if it turned out that the reason soil based bugs show such resistance is because some other bug is already using this antibiotic and they had to develop resistance to survive. For example, look at Penicilin which is naturually produced by mold presumably for this very reason: to kill bacteria.

      We've been putting antibiotics in animal feed for a long time now. Probably the environment is "polluted" with it just like with pesticides, mercury, etc.
      • No that's not the reason here. They tested things like Vancomyocin which is not in animal feed.
      • The amount of "antibiotic pollution" is insignifigant compared to the naturally produced antibiotics in the soil. Microbes that live in the soil can get an advantage by producing antimicrobials. So the bugs just make poisons and learn defenses, and if the threat is gone they lose some resistance to be a faster growing bug. There are millions of bacteria in a handfull of soil, And there is a bunch of soil on the planet, so even if we dumped 10 million pounds of antibiotics per year into the environment it
    • The specualtion about super bugs seems misplaced. So far antibiotics work quite well, albeit with limited lifespans of usefulness before resistance is induced...

      True enough, but the problem is that this induction of resistance is being seriously accelerated by massive abuse and oversubscription of antibiotics. Using anti biotics on a large scale in agriculture for example may be profitable but it has also ruined several drugs that could otherwise still be used to treat humans. Similarly massive 'convenience
      • Why would you treat bird flu (which by definition is a virus) with an anti-biotic?
        • The parent said "the Chinese managed to wreck several antiviral drugs", not antibacterial drugs. If that's the case, they must be violating a bunch of patents, since even the cheapest ones I can think of would cost more than the chicken if used for more than a couple days. More likely, there just aren't any antivirals that have ever been very helpful for any flu...even the ones approved for (regular) influenza, Tamiflu and Relenza, were almost useless - I haven't seen either for years.

    • Re:Suggests the opposite perhaps? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Malor ( 3658 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @07:46PM (#14529293) Journal
      Did you actually read the article? They talk at length about how the soil is, well, a giant germ-warfare zone. Bacteria are all attacking each other all the time. Two of the strains they pulled out of the soil were resistant to 15 of the 21 antibiotics with which they tested. They explicitly mention that many of the antibiotics are already synthesized by competing bacteria. They believed, though, that it was very unlikely that any bacterium would ever have been exposed to all the drugs they were resistant to. The researchers believe the germs are using existing defense mechanisms to apply to new (to them) antibiotics.

      Your assertion that 'because no superbug yet exists, none ever will' is just, well, stupid. That's like saying that nothing ever changes... yet, somehow, we have people now, and we didn't forty or fifty million years ago.

      The modern world is unique, from an evolutionary standpoint, so none of the existing bacteria will have evolved to deal properly with it. They're working on that. A superbug is only a matter of time.

      MRSA is a pretty damn good first iteration.

    • Hey my SO is a nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit, and she sees kids die of multiple-drug-resistant infections all the time. I think your optimism is not justified.

  • from the stars or from below? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Somehow, somewhere, sometime, something's gonna' getcha'

  • As someone in Microbiology... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CupBeEmpty ( 720791 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:43PM (#14528980)
    I am not really surprised that soil bacteria are incredibly hardy. Remember that Bacillus anthracis (or Anthrax) is a bacterium that is endemic to soil. It is an incredibly hardy bacterium that can last as a spore in the right conditions for years (literally decades). Bacteria that live in the soil live in a hostile environment, to which they will develop methods of immunity. If a bacteria can live in soil, which is a hostile environment then one might guess that the same bacteria could handle the relatively "easy-to-live-in" human body. It is also interesting to note that many of our antibiotics are derivied from organisms that fight off bacterial infection. These same organims are prevalent in the soil. I am not sure what the big surprise is here?

    • Re:As someone in Microbiology... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Onuma ( 947856 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @07:40PM (#14529256)
      Nature will find a way...

      I'm not surprised in the least. Having studied Forensic science - not quite as detailed as microbiology - I know a little about this subject. Organisms living in soil are exposed to numerous chemicals and other species, it's a wonder that they're not immune to even more antibiotics and disinfectant chemicals.

      Another point: are these same resistant organisms hostile towards humans? They could simply exist without needing us in the least. They could also be beneficial, like the organisms which live inside and outside of our bodies; symbiotes.

      I think what is worse than bacteria becoming resistant to the drugs we use is our haste to use such drugs. People are far too dependent on prescription and over-the-counter medications these days, even if it is known that said medications will not cure or even treat the symptoms. Zithromax is not a proper prescription for the common cold (I have been prescribed this by Army doctors, for exactly this reason). I'm a fan of the placebo - let them think it will work, and chances are it will.
      • Organisms living in soil are exposed to numerous chemicals and other species, it's a wonder that they're not immune to even more antibiotics and disinfectant chemicals.

        In reality, it's not a matter of "immune". There only needs to be enough of a resistance that the process of evolution can take place. Letting the bacteria multiply, even slowly, will eventually create complete resistance.
        • Actually, it's more like a cost-benefit analysis. Almost every immunity to a drug or anti-biotic has a cost. One of the more common ones is an ion-pump which not only costs energy to keep it running, but can lose you vital resources in the process of "keeping out the drugs". So it's too expensive to keep unless you are living in an environment where the drugs it defends against are commonly encountered. Other defenses have similar costs.

          So if a bacterium isn't exposed to a particular drug for several ge
      • People are far too dependent on prescription and over-the-counter medications these days

        To which over the counter medications are you refering to? For the most part OTCs don't directly affect infections, only our response to them. NyQuill is just anelgesics, cough supressors, and decongestants, nothing meant to kill bacteria. Over the counter medications just make us feel less miserable while sick.
    • Two environments can be "harsh", yet have orthogonal dimensions of "harsh."

      Some animals live in your intestines. Pretty harsh environment, but they do. It doesn't mean they can survive in the ground, nor that ground living bacteria can live in your intestines.
    • Please do not describe my body as easy to live in.
    • On a sidenote, the flushing of antibiotics is contributing to the superbug problem. Flushing of any drug is bad (for example, traces of Prozac have been detected in London's water supply, traces of cocaine have been found in Italy's), but here's the question. How do you get rid of them? This has all the makings of a new cheech and chong movie.
      • That is rather difficult for some antibiotics... penicillins, for example, are eliminated primarily by being excreted unchanged by the kidney. Early on, urine was collected from patients so that the penicillin could be reused.

        As far as actual tablets, etc., go...antibiotics are usually prescribed to be taken until there are no more tablets. If you do have any meds you want to get rid of, please take them to a pharmacy - they should put it in their drug disposal bucket for no charge.

    • First, according to that study, many, not all microbes tested are resistant to antibiotics. Secondly, we haven't found all antibiotics yet, which are, by the way, produced by soil fungi and bacteria. Also, I was a bit confused that G.Wright et al just 'threw 21 different antibiotics at the bugs to see if they could survive' - at those Streptomyces, who actually produce antibiotics! Of course they are not resistant to all of them, but.. And, our body is far from being "easy-to-live-in" by the way :) - just

  • Crocodile blood antibiotics (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ShnowDoggie ( 858806 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:43PM (#14528983)
    Alligator/Crocodile blood anyone? They live in swampy places, fight even each other, and do not seem to get infections. (Well, not as easily as humans anyway ...) Here is just one link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4155522.stm [bbc.co.uk]
  • One has to wonder if the soil-dwelling bacteria have a natural resistance to antibacterial agents, or if it evolved over the course of the last half century. We pump farm animals full of antibiotics that they don't really need, and said animals produce extraordinary amounts of solid waste full of highly diluted antibiotics and their metabolites. This waste becomes fertilizer, which means it's spread over huge surface areas where it leaches into the ground.

    Could constant low-level exposure to antibiotics be

  • Soil != Living Human (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pkhuong ( 686673 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:46PM (#14528993) Homepage
    Topic says it all. Different pH, temperature, humidity, ... Bacteria, fungi (etc) that thrive in the ground usually don't like it as much in a hot, warm and nearly neutral human body. We don't have a lot of things that work very well on fungi (heck, most of our antibiotics come from fungi), but they don't represent a large danger, simply because our insides are usually a bit too warm for them. Let's not panic too early.

    • Re:Soil != Living Human (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Conjugation. Bacteria can exchange the plasmids that impart resistance. They hook up with little tubes between them. The danger here is not in soil bacteria, but in the chance that these plasmids will transfer to infectious bacteria. The significance here is that they discovered that the genetic code to resist 15 antibiotics is all around us in the soil, and it just takes a chance meeting for plasmids to be exchanged and for resistance to be imparted in this way. It is just a matter of time, and it has
    • The article says that the genes from soil bacteria may get transferred to human pathogenic bacteria. Strains of bacteria resistant to vancomycin are believed to have evolved in this manner. Still, no one is calling for panic. The scientists in the article are researching the mechanisms by which the soil bacteria use to neutralize antibiotics so that future antibiotics can be improved.

    • We don't have a lot of things that work very well on fungi (heck, most of our antibiotics come from fungi), but they don't represent a large danger, simply because our insides are usually a bit too warm for them.

      Nah, fungi just love warm wet guts. What they don't like is our immune systems. Fungi have many more types of protein than bacteria, and lack the capsule that bacteria hide inside, making them highly susceptible to the human adaptive immune system. With a strong immune system, you can eat live y

  • This just in! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Millenniumman ( 924859 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:46PM (#14528994)
    Studies have shown that eating dirt is, in fact, unhealthy.
    • However, eating clay [pfizerch.com] can come in handy.
    • gonna disagree with you there. Bacteria are our allies, not our enemies. All of us have billions of bacteria living in our digestive track. Antibiotics kill off the 'good' bacteria - the ones that help us digest our food, synthesize vitamins, etc - allowing 'bad' bacteria to take over.

      So eating dirt [gardenoflife.com] might be a good idea - gotta populate those intestines & train your immune system somehow, unless you're planning on living in a bubble...
      • I agree. I think that not eating and playing in dirt like normal people is why kids these days are so fucking fragile (insane allergies, asthma, etc.). If I were to breed, I'd tell my kids to go the hell outside and play in the dirt (like I did).

  • Major Oversight: Who will develop the antiobiotic? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by reporter ( 666905 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:49PM (#14529007) Homepage
    The article starting this thread seems to imply that these superbugs in the soil might be used as test subjects to check the efficacy of new antibiotics. However, there is a more serious issue: American companies are abandoning the development of new antibiotics [boston.com].

    There is a touch irony here. The major justification for non-socialized medicine like that in the United States is that private enterprise will provide the economic rewards which will spur innovation in developing new drugs. However, what happens when the capitalistic system does not provide the necessary rewards?

    Such is the case with new antibiotics. Typically, patients take antibiotics for a week and never consume the stuff again until the next infection arises. By contrast, drugs treating chronic conditions like excessive cholesterol are consumed daily and hence provide signficant financial rewards. As a result, American companies have abandoned the development of new antibiotics in favor of drugs treating chronic conditions.

    What is the point of using superbugs in the soil to test the efficacy of new antibiotics when Americans companies are not developing new antibiotics?

    Then again, in the end, we are all dead.

    • Well, if no one does, then someone will, because the profit will be enormous without competition. And then someone else will come in with a cheaper antibiotic, with a lower profit margin.

    • WOW... how wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CupBeEmpty ( 720791 )
      Well I am glad that the Boston Globe, pinnacle of science that it is has deemed antibiotics to be a dead field. I would say that this cannot be more wrong. Not only are antibacterials being actively sought I have first hand knowledge of this fact [uchicago.edu]. Private industry and the government have poured millions into finding vaccinations, antimicrobials, and many other biological elements of disease resistance. Your statement is wrong at best and intentionally misleading at worst. The most hilarious part is tha
    • I agree that this is a fairly sizeable problem with capitalism. But, considering the reality of the problem, you can hardly blame them for their reluctance.

      Let's use an analogy from Star Trek. Imagine that we're using our phasers, photon cannons or whatnot to fight off the Borg. Any given setting for our weapons is only effective for a few shots. To stay effective in this fight, we need to use a variety of weapons with a variety of settings between them. Variability wins while too much repetition is deat

  • Antibiotics (Score:2, Informative)

    by eebra82 ( 907996 )
    An antibiotic is a drug that kills or slows the growth of bacteria. Antibiotics are one class of antimicrobials, a larger group which also includes anti-viral, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic drugs. They are relatively harmless to the host, and therefore can be used to treat infections. The term, coined by Selman Waksman, originally described only those formulations derived from living organisms, in contradistinction to "chemotherapeutic agents", which were purely synthetic. Nowadays the term "antibiotic" i

  • Dirt's a tough place to live (Score:4, Insightful)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @06:54PM (#14529034) Homepage
    Soil is pretty difficult environment for survival. You could make the case those microbes have earned the right to live there by being tough sonsabitches. When we wanted antibiotic resistant bacteria, we used to go take samples at the hospital. Some of those cultures were scary. The bugs that survive at the hospital are the toughest mofo's on the culture block.

    Just like weeds picking up resistance to herbicides. With the rampant application of weed killer, we're actually breeding tougher weeds.

    There's a reason they survive. It's because they're tough and adaptable. Sets up an interesting situation. We depend on modern herbicides and pesticides to maintain the food production it takes to feed a planet that's already over-crowded. But the weeds and insects we're trying to kill aren't sissies. At some point the chemicals we have to use to kill them are start going to take a toll on us.

    Or maybe they already are.

    • I instantly thought of this when I read the headline. I'm sure you've seen the studies. The ones that say that the average tap water has X-particles per million of Prozac, X-particle per million of Xanax, etc. The point being that human beings consume large amounts of medicine and then much of them gets excreted out somehow and eventually (and unfortunately) find their way into the ecosystem. Our water and probably our land. So a study like this makes me wonder (and feel free to club me over the head if thi
      • There are tons of studies out there, already. It's been happening for quite a while now. People, every day, die from common bacterial infections that have evolved to a point where doctors simply don't have what they need to kill them. It's an escalating arms war that we (humans) will eventually lose. I personally know two people that died, in hospitals, from simple bacterial infections. I believe that the CDC has been warning about overuse of antibiotics for a while now, but unfortunately, you can find
    • a "neat" tip if you land up in the hospital you might want to get a pack of cheap pens and then if the doctors/nurses leave your room have them switch to a new pen.
    • As in the case of weeds, genetic engineering solved the problem by producing GM crops/foods etc, so the next thing is humans, being resistant to harmful bugs! just wait for another 10 years or so..
    • We depend on modern herbicides and pesticides to maintain the food production it takes to feed a planet that's already over-crowded.

      We have more than enough arable land and labor to feed everyone on this planet. The problem is the greedy bastards who hoard resources for themselves and cause others to stave.

      LK
  • So much for "God made dirt & dirt don't hurt."

  • I'm glad I didn't take that graduate position! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by turtledawn ( 149719 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @07:13PM (#14529127)
    I was recently considering entering graduate school, and one of the fellowships I was looking at was for a study examining very nearly this topic- the effect of antibacterial-contaminated runnoff from farms on soil and watershed bacteria, with a possible extension into effects on the digestive flora of aquatic life. I didn't take it, but it seemed like a very interesting and important subject. If it's made it into the mainstream press already, though, I would have been facing a pretty limited opportunity for publishing. I'm glad the information's out there! Maybe this wll help make clear the importance of more limited prophylactic antibiotic use.

  • How to explain that? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jodka ( 520060 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @07:18PM (#14529152)
    Could the natural resistance of soil bacteria to antibiotics result from the natural presence of antibiotics in soil?

    Penicillin, the quintessential antibiotic, is derived from mold. Suppose that the molds and bacteria are battling it out in the soil, and the molds attack the bacteria with antibiotics, so then the bacteria evolve resistance to those antibiotics.

     

    • Re:How to explain that? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      When I took high school biology we learned that many antibiotics were developed from soil molds. So maybe soil bacteria are highly exposed to same fungi and have natually developed defences?

      Fortunately soil bacteria stays in the soil and doesn't attack people very often.

      Next topic please.
    • That's exactly how it works! microbes live in communities - so fungi, algae, bacteria all live in the same spot. They occupy different ecological niches though - they eat different 'foods', excrete chemicals, that other microbes consume, etc. There's always a sort of an equillibrium in the community. Excreting antibiotics is a form of self-defense.
    • I was thinking the same thing. Molds would be common in soils and molds produce the compounds we use as antibiotics... so why wouldn't there be soil bacteria that are naturally resistant?

      There must be lots of old soils samples around - why not take samples of soils that were taken prior to the antibiotic era (before the 40's or so) and see if they don't get the same result?
  • But soil bacteria were the major *SOURCE* of soil bacteria after penecillin was discovered... of *COURSE* they are resistant, they are the source of many of those drugs.
    • This is a critical comment and should be modded up. I was about to make the same comment (so hence I may be biased for my praise of your comment).
      http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/629_1.html [britannica.com]
      Waksman was studying soil bacteria when he discovered streptomycin. Numerous other antibiotics were identified from similiar bacteria, so it is not surprising, as you mention, that many forms of bacteria are resistent to antibiotics, since either the soil was the original source for the antibiotic, or the mecha
    • MY GOD?! Soil bacteria is the major source of soil bacteria? Holy smokes batman!

  • Required Simpsons quote, adaptively mutated (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tsar ( 536185 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @08:05PM (#14529377) Homepage Journal
    Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just read the article, and, uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The soil beneath us has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master race of antibotic-resistant bacteria. It's difficult to tell from this discussion point whether they will consume the captive ants or merely enslave them.

    One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the superbugs will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new microscopic overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a Slashdot poster with excellent karma, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground plague nurseries.

  • Er, Um soil is where we GET the antibiotics! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @08:36PM (#14529513)
    There's a very good reason the bacteria in the soil are resistant to antibiotics, and you don't need a fancy new study to figure this out.

    If you research where antibiotics come from, where drug companies have for 50 years or more looked for new antibiotics, it's in the dang soil!

    yes, scientists figured out long ago to not just set out pertri dishes and hope for new varieties of spores to come to them-- they've gone out into the world collecting soil and the concomitant spores. IIRC the majority of antibiotics in use were found in the soil of various places, all over the world.

    Nothing new here.

  • Not being in the biological sciences, I have a question then for those who are.

    Does this mean that our kids should play in the dirt (and occasionally eat a bit), to develop immunity, or that they shouldn't, because antibiotics may not help them if they get sick from it?

    • Good point .

      The monitor lizard lives in bacteria heavy environmnet but their immune system has been hardened.

      We could excercise our immune systems by taking a weakened bacteria or eat 'dirt' monthly but thats not going to help out the people who aren't healthy like older people.

  • At some point... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sgage ( 109086 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @09:02PM (#14529663)
    ... you just have to trust your immune system. The whole "hygienic" germ-free hysteria that our culture promotes (and which has been promoted for many years by many corporations that sell relevant products) is a self-fullfilling prophecy. If you don't eat some dirt as a kid, you won't ever develop the appropriate defenses.

    If you don't grovel around in the real world and exercise the ol' immune system, you'll have all kinds of allergies and asthma and whatnot. When I was a kid... oh, never mind. No, DO mind. When I was a kid, hardly anyone had allergies, or asthma, or ear-aches, or any of that crap.

    Blanket overuse of antibiotics is exactly the same as pesticides and herbicides ending up with pesticide and herbicide resistant pests and weeds. You can't just make "negative" manifestations of nature go away like that. Most of the /. readership is probably engineer-types, and that is engineer thinking. Biology is way, way more complicated. ;-) I feel like I'm one of the few biologists/ecologists here...

    Anyway, e.g., the polio outbreak of the 40's and 50's was actually due largely to too much cleanliness. Very young children would typically develop resistance to the (totally ubiquitous, endemic) polio virus in earlier times (via eating dirt), but "modern" notions of hygiene precluded this.

    So, eat dirt or die! :-)

    - sgage

  • Well, no kidding... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Angst Badger ( 8636 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @09:05PM (#14529684)
    I hate to belabor the obvious, but it's no wonder soil bacteria are resistant to antibiotics: they live in close proximity with the same fungi that evolved antibiotic chemicals to combat them. While we humans are doing a pretty poor job of judiciously using antibiotics and we are probably creating some real long-term problems by polluting the environment with antibiotics and disinfectants, we shouldn't forget that we didn't invent antibiotics, we discovered them. There are going to be lots of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics simply because they evolved in an environment rich in fungi that produce them.

    If you want to worry about antibiotic resistant bacteria capable of causing disease in humans, hospitals are a much bigger breeding ground than soil, which harbors innumerable species of bacteria that are harmless to us or even beneficial agriculturally, and only a few that can do us harm.
  • Soil bacteria is responsible for cleaning a lot of the water we dump onto the ground. Any organic solids in the water are digested by the bacteria, and the water recharges aquifers. It's drawn out again years later as clean as can be.

    This process is recreated by tertiary wastewater treatment plants where bacteria is added to sewer water to digest all the solids. The bacteria are then coagulated with a chemical such as alum and they are allowed to settle out of the water. This treated water is then disinfec
  • Well we do put chemicals into our soil either if it's to kill weed or some to grow grass my only guess is that after years of exposure to such chemicals is what makes them very resistant to antibiotics wether it be in a direct or indirect way.

  • I have some personal experience with this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gone.fishing ( 213219 ) on Saturday January 21, 2006 @09:40PM (#14529881) Journal
    A few years ago I was working in my garden and my leg started itching, there was a small red dot mid-calf and minor swelling around it. I figured it was a bug bite. Within an hour the entire calf had turned red and was warm to the touch. I made a trip to Urgent Care and the doctor perscribed an anti-biotic and told me to go home and soak the leg in the hottest water I could stand. The next day I went into see my own doctor, by now my calf looked like an over-cooked hot dog and I was afraid the skin was litterally going to split open.

    They drew blood and attempted to locate some pus to drain but found that it was not in sacks but more or less distributed though the leg (so the attempt to lance did not result in much drainage). I was given another kind of anti-biotic and was told to continue with the frequent hot water soaks. This time the anti-biotic seemed to help because the swelling started to reduce but soon enough, the swelling started up again and I found myself back in the clinic. This time my leg had started to lose it's pulse and my foot was grayish. They ran an anti-biotic in through an IV and had me elevate my leg for a few hours in the clinic. I was given another perscription and sent home with instructions to keep my leg elevated and to give it more hot soaks. I was told to come in to be checked the following day and to cancel any plans that I had for the weekend. These last anti-biotics worked and the swelling in my leg stayed down. The following day, I dutifully returned to the doctor and was told that had the swelling not shown such dramatic improvment, I would have lost my leg.

    Through all of this, I never ended up in the hospital. I was treated with a barage of very powerful anti-biotics (the same exact ones that they use for "flesh eating bacteria") and my doctor told me that the bug I had was very closely related to that bug, he said that it was soil-borne and probably entered the skin though a bug bite.

    I was even able to keep my weekend plans but I did not walk much and had to keep the leg up a lot (I went camping but not too far away). It took well over a year for my leg to return to it's normal color and I lost some tissue below the skin, these "things" are still with me (the best that I can describe it is it is like a scar underneath the skin, you can see some roughness in the skin and there is a different texture to the area but all the muscles and everything seem just fine.

    I think my experience brings out the best and the worst of the HMO style medical system. I'm pretty confident that had I had a regular kind of insurance, I would have been in the hospital. On the other hand, the clinic was well staffed and had access to the right lab equipment and drugs to treat me. I'm glad it came out like it did and I really have to credit my doctors for everything that they did. They saved my leg.

    • I call bullshit. I don't believe you at all. Did your doctor bother to actually tell you what it was you had?
      • "Did your doctor bother to actually tell you what it was you had?"

        They often don't unless pressed. They also might not know... The story sounds like a "typical" experience.

        That said, I doubt the antibiotics would work THAT fast, so I have a hard time believing THIS story. But the doctor response sounds typical.
        • Actually it doesn't sounds too unbelievable to me. If got Cellulitus in my leg a few years back - I'm a reasonably fit 40 year old male with no immune problem. I think the bug entered through an insect bit and what was truly alarming was the speed in which it spread. Went from a mild itch to my whole shin and ankle being a deep shade of red and equisitively painful within 24 hours. The spread slowed after that somewhat, but it took the Doctors two attempts at different antibiotics - i forget which - to
          • Thank you.

            I think cellulitis is a sort of "generic" term (like Bronchitis) that descirbes the effect of the infection on the body but it has a cause (bacteria) and figuring out the kind of bacteria is what makes treating this so hard. Frankly, they take a sort of "shotgun" approach, using broad-spectrum antibiotics that kill lots of different bacterias.

            If I made it sound like I was cured within a short time, then I made it sound wrong. I had a longer recovery than that but I was no longer worried about my
            • It is, comes from 'lysis', which is just a medical term for cell rupture or disruption (i.e. cellular lysis). Sounds good when you get diagnosed, but it's just a description :-). I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry, which although it's nearly 20 years since I worked in the field, does come in useful when talking to medics.

              My Doctor was quite upfront that he couldn't identify the bug/strain without extensive tests, but that wasn't too important. More a question of rolling out the antibiotics to find one that w
      • They gave me the name of the bacteria that was infecting me but I really don't remember it, hell I can't even remember the names of the anti-biotics.

        But see another reply http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174668&thresho ld=0&commentsort=1&mode=thread&pid=14530573#145317 55 [slashdot.org] and you will see I am not the only one with this experience.

        When you finally get the right anti-biotic they can work remarkably fast.

  • theories always suck. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Stumbles ( 602007 )
    So basically once you get beyond all the mombo jumbo, what these guys are are looking to do is; find a way to develop anti-bacterial agents capable of killing microbes and their their cousins. Noble in effort but overlooks one fundamental problem. What happens when these agents start attacking the very same or similar microbs and bacteria that are essential to the growth of plants? Theres no way they can guarantee those agents will not. A disaster waiting to happen.
  • Does this mean we would do well to be offering aid in the form of shoes and perhaps encouraging paved walkways in poorer countries?
  • Sometimes, in difficult to treat cases, doctors will prescribe what my mom always called "Napalm" antibiotics, that is, antibiotics that are so strong that they kill everything, including the "good" bacteria lactobacillus acidophilus in the intestines, and the result? The worst imaginable liquid, dripping, "hershey squirts", "green apple two-step" diarrhea.

    If the good bacteria aren't replenished soon enough, it allows the yeast candida albicans that is also present in the intestines to grow unchecked. Norma
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The advice for today: don't soil yourself.
  • ...welcome our new Superbug overlords!

    I, for one, Welcome them :)

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