America's CDC Warns of Increase in Drug-Resistant Bacteria Infections (cnn.com) 18
America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "has issued a health advisory to warn the public of an increase of a drug-resistant bacteria called Shigella," reports CNN:
There are limited antimicrobial treatments available for these particular drug-resistant strains of Shigella and it's also easily transmissible, warned the CDC in the Friday advisory. It's also able to spread antimicrobial resistance genes to other bacteria that infect the intestines.... The CDC says patients will recover from shigellosis without any antimicrobial treatment and it can be managed with oral hydration, but for those who are infected with the drug-resistant strains there are no recommendations for treatment if symptoms become more severe. The percentage of infections from drug-resistant strains of the bacteria increased from zero in 2015 to 5% in 2022, according to the CDC.
Nationwide, there are nearly 3 million antimicrobial-resistant infections each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result, according to the CDC. A recent report by the United Nations said roughly 5 million deaths worldwide were associated with antimicrobial resistance in 2019 and the annual toll is expected to increase to 10 million by 2050 if steps are not taken to stop the spread of antimicrobial resistance.
Nationwide, there are nearly 3 million antimicrobial-resistant infections each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result, according to the CDC. A recent report by the United Nations said roughly 5 million deaths worldwide were associated with antimicrobial resistance in 2019 and the annual toll is expected to increase to 10 million by 2050 if steps are not taken to stop the spread of antimicrobial resistance.
Phage Therapy for drug-resistant strains (Score:5, Informative)
It is not well known but there is alternative method of treating antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria based on bacteriophages (phages in short) which is very effective (having 80-90% success rate) and fairy cheap. Probably few millions of lives could be saved yearly if this information would be more propagated.
Here in Poland we have few specialized treatment units (regular hospitals with normal doctors) which are specializing in phage therapy. They are accepting patients from abroad as well:
https://hirszfeld.pl/en/struct... [hirszfeld.pl]
Re:Phage Therapy for drug-resistant strains (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not well known but there is alternative method of treating antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria based on bacteriophages (phages in short) which is very effective (having 80-90% success rate) and fairy cheap. Probably few millions of lives could be saved yearly if this information would be more propagated.
Probably a few million lives could be saved if medical and health providers weren't so damn greedy. How ironic we're in this position because of over-prescribing to people who will slam a z-pack for a bad hangover because they ain't got time for that.
And it's no surprise if few have ever heard of your suggested solution. If it worked perfectly to resolve this problem, it would only take a decade or two for American insurance to accept it.
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Leaving Lepidoptera... Please don't touch the displays, little boy!
So cute.
Re:Phage Therapy for drug-resistant strains (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, most resistant bacteria are bred on animal farms.
It's the greedy industrial animal farms that are causing the problems.
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I'm not sure that it's more difficult to reproduce results, but IIUC phages tend to mutate, just like all other bacteria, so maintaining a good strain is continual effort requiring skilled people.
There are actually lots of "edge case" medical treatments, that work quite will in their use cases, but aren't used because they require specialized equipment or training. Consider that perhaps the best way of debriding is having fly larvae eat the dead pieces off. But it's almost never done.
Phages available as OTC supplements? (Score:2)
This particular bacterium has a pretty high level of resistance, apparently, though most healthy people's immune systems can clear the infection on their own. But the key word is "healthy", which is why everybody between about age 35 and 50 has "died" from Shigellosis at least once while playing Oregon trail. Dysentery is also known as shigella dysenteriae. :-)
Anyway, the obvious way to deal with an antibiotic-resistant bacteria is phages. Bacteriophages are viruses that attack specific strains of bacte
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And worth noting that the previous post about phages had not yet been written when I started writing that post....
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Whether the four phages in that particular pill target Shigella or not, I couldn't say with certainty
Shigella family is mentioned on this page as being treated:
https://hirszfeld.pl/en/struct... [hirszfeld.pl]
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Whether the four phages in that particular pill target Shigella or not, I couldn't say with certainty
Shigella family is mentioned on this page as being treated:
https://hirszfeld.pl/en/struct... [hirszfeld.pl]
Oh, phages in general definitely work for treating that particular bacterium. That article I linked tells a long history of folks doing so over the last century.
What I don't know is if the over-the-counter phages that Life Extension sells happen to be well matched to that bacterium.
The folks at the page you're linking to have a much broader collection of phages (the Life Extension pills supposedly contain only four strains), and they do per-patient testing to see which specific phage types will be most eff
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The other thing about phages is that they are dirt-cheap to manufacture, breed a phage for a particular infection, stick them in a bio-reactor for mass-production and after a couple of weeks you have tens of thousands or more doses ready for packaging and distribution.
The USSR was quite active in researching and using phages to treat infections and they didn't solely rely on on antibiotics like the west did after WWII. There's a quite a good writeup about the history of phages here: https://royalsocietypubl [royalsocie...ishing.org]
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Cows, fish, chickens all the antibiotics you want (Score:5, Interesting)