New Antibiotic Can Kill Drug-Resistant Bacteria (theguardian.com) 63
fahrbot-bot shares a report from The Guardian: Scientists have discovered an entirely new class of antibiotic that appears to kill one of three bacteria considered to pose the greatest threat to human health because of their extensive drug-resistance. Zosurabalpin defeated highly drug-resistant strains of Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (Crab) in mouse models of pneumonia and sepsis, and was being tested in human trials. Crab is classified as a priority 1 critical pathogen by the World Health Organization, alongside two other drug-resistant forms of bacteria -- Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacteriaceae.
Antibiotic-resistant infections pose an urgent threat to human health -- particularly those caused by a large group of bacteria known as Gram-negative bacteria, which are protected by an outer shell containing a substance called lipopolysaccharide (LPS). "LPS allows bacteria to live in harsh environments, and it also allows them to evade attack by our immune system," said Dr Michael Lobritz, the global head of infectious diseases at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development in Basel Switzerland, which developed the new drug. No new antibiotic for Gram-negative bacteria have been approved in more than 50 years.
Roche had previously identified Zosurabalpin as capable of blocking the growth of A baumannii but it was not clear how it worked, or if it would be effective in animals with Crab-related infections. Through a series of experiments published in Nature, Prof Daniel Kahne at Harvard University in Cambridge, US, and colleagues showed that the drug prevented LPS from being transported to the outer membrane of the bacterium, killing it. They also found that Zosurabalpin considerably reduced levels of bacteria in mice with Crab-induced pneumonia and prevented the death of those with Crab-related sepsis. While [Lobritz] stressed that this molecule alone would not solve the public health threat of antimicrobial resistant infections, the discovery could lay the foundations for future efforts to drug the same transport system in other bacteria.
Antibiotic-resistant infections pose an urgent threat to human health -- particularly those caused by a large group of bacteria known as Gram-negative bacteria, which are protected by an outer shell containing a substance called lipopolysaccharide (LPS). "LPS allows bacteria to live in harsh environments, and it also allows them to evade attack by our immune system," said Dr Michael Lobritz, the global head of infectious diseases at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development in Basel Switzerland, which developed the new drug. No new antibiotic for Gram-negative bacteria have been approved in more than 50 years.
Roche had previously identified Zosurabalpin as capable of blocking the growth of A baumannii but it was not clear how it worked, or if it would be effective in animals with Crab-related infections. Through a series of experiments published in Nature, Prof Daniel Kahne at Harvard University in Cambridge, US, and colleagues showed that the drug prevented LPS from being transported to the outer membrane of the bacterium, killing it. They also found that Zosurabalpin considerably reduced levels of bacteria in mice with Crab-induced pneumonia and prevented the death of those with Crab-related sepsis. While [Lobritz] stressed that this molecule alone would not solve the public health threat of antimicrobial resistant infections, the discovery could lay the foundations for future efforts to drug the same transport system in other bacteria.
Best News (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the best news I have heard for a long time.
Yes, bacteria getting antibiotic resistance is a serious threat and this will save a lot of people.
Re:Best News (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Best News (Score:5, Insightful)
Policy choice, other countries have curbed overuse through legislation. It probably will raise the price some so though so we can't also get mad about that at the same time but it is worth doing because we are just really asking for a bacterial superbug.
Re: Best News (Score:1)
How much you want to bed that this research was paid for by Big Livestock?
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Question is just for how long. Greedy and incompetent MDs overprescribe. Greedy farmers feed them to their animals. And hence resistances develop.
Re:Best News (Score:5, Interesting)
Question is just for how long. Greedy and incompetent MDs overprescribe. Greedy farmers feed them to their animals. And hence resistances develop.
One of the reasons I'm no longer a farmer is the farm I used to work refused to jump aboard the "antibiotics for no reason" train. You don't do that, you don't compete in the market. Because the antibiotics also tended to be poured into the same feed as the hormonal supplements that promoted over-stimulation of growth. We made a fight of it for a few years, but eventually we couldn't produce enough dairy per cow, nor big enough beef cattle, to compete on the open market.
While there should have been federally mandated regulations against such practices to keep the food supply healthier, it was pretty difficult to get a bunch of family farmers together with other family farmers to mount a comparable effort against the massive industrialized farms. Especially when most of the family farmers were busy actually farming most of their waking hours and didn't have time to run around behind people's backs paying off senators. Plus, the banks tended to frown on needing a loan for bribery, while they were perfectly happy to give you another loan for a barn or piece of equipment they could foreclose on if you failed to pay it back.
And yet again, greed won out. I'm gonna say the crazy thing again. Maybe electing the most egotistical greedy pricks to run the country isn't the best way to get a country that doesn't appear to be run by egotistical greedy pricks? Just a thought.
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Such blatantly un-American sentiments will get you a nice, dark cell in a SuperMax for the rest of your life. You're a threat to the (checks charge sheet) "egotistical greedy pricks" in charge. Not a very big threat - they'll destroy you pretty quickly - but an intolerable threat.
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You'll be getting the DHS investigating you in 3 ... 2... 1...
Such blatantly un-American sentiments will get you a nice, dark cell in a SuperMax for the rest of your life. You're a threat to the (checks charge sheet) "egotistical greedy pricks" in charge. Not a very big threat - they'll destroy you pretty quickly - but an intolerable threat.
Luckly, I don't own enough to have even registered on the greedy prick's radar. I've ducked 'em for fifty years just be being staunchly middle class. Had I made my statements and had some money behind me, you may have a point.
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Greedy and incompetent MDs overprescribe.
I get the incompetent complaint, which can also be chalked up to simply appeasing the patient who *wants* antibiotics even if the MD knows better (and should do better in these cases), but am pretty sure the family physician doesn't make a profit from writing a prescription.
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Greedy and incompetent MDs overprescribe.
I get the incompetent complaint, which can also be chalked up to simply appeasing the patient who *wants* antibiotics even if the MD knows better (and should do better in these cases), but am pretty sure the family physician doesn't make a profit from writing a prescription.
Maybe not directly, but one way a doctor can see more patients is to just prescribe drugs quickly without asking too many questions, running tests, and spending the time to probe for the underlying cause. The money from seeing the additional patients can be substantial.
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"This is the best news I have heard for a long time."
Indeed, no more shaving to avoid crabs.
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I couldn't help but picture literal crabs as I read this, which made it really hard to get through the summary due to the crazy mental images it invoked. ;) "Crab-related pneumonia", little crabs crawling all around a person's lungs...
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As the other replies suggest, it is only a matter of time before threats adapt. What I would consider better news isn't some new one-off, but an (existing) permanent solution to the problem, to which threats can not adapt: Targeted Alpha Therapy [youtube.com]. No one seems to care though, at least on slashdot, where the response is always crickets. It mirrors the situation with energy; any low-carbon energy source is fine, as long as it isn't nuclear. Not even to save your life, and certainly not to lift billions out of
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Sanitorium (Score:5, Insightful)
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I hope the use of it is confined to in-patient facilities where the entire drug regimen is strictly enforced so we donâ(TM)t have the same antibiotic resistance problem quickly ensue due to patient non-compliance.
That might cut into someone's profit.
Re:Sanitorium (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a sort of uniquely American healthcare thing to worry about though.
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If there's one thing we've learned from COVID it's that viruses are neither racist nor nationalistic. An American bred superbug isn't going to stay out of Europe because it's scared of socialism.
Re:Zero Trust; the real killer. (Score:5, Insightful)
including lying about the dangers of said new drug
Ah yes, the lies. The lies which every drug manufacturer lists [jnj.com] on their site [pfizer.com] for the public to see.
and/or lying about the safety and effectiveness of existing drugs
Such as? Considering the FDA and whatever European version study all drugs before letting them be used, and continue to monitor the drugs after deployment, unless you have evidence of these supposed "lies", the only one lying is you.
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including lying about the dangers of said new drug
Ah yes, the lies. The lies which every drug manufacturer lists [jnj.com] on their site [pfizer.com] for the public to see.
and/or lying about the safety and effectiveness of existing drugs
Such as? Considering the FDA and whatever European version study all drugs before letting them be used, and continue to monitor the drugs after deployment, unless you have evidence of these supposed "lies", the only one lying is you.
Whilst I trust the MHRA (UK), EMA (EU) and TGA (AU) more than I trust the FDA (American organisations seem to not just be susceptible to corruption, but almost prone to it) and that isn't to say I explicitly distrust the FDA, I think the perfectly justifiable concern is that if misused, an antibiotic powerful enough to combat already antibiotic resistant bacteria may just create even more antibiotic resistant bacteria.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "handle with care".
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Any compound with a detectable antibiotic behaviour will impose a selection pressure on it's target bacteria (or other microbes/ parasites) in pretty strict proportion to it's effectiveness as an antibiotic. The more effective an antibiotic, the greater the selection pay-off to the microbe that has a mutation that
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including lying about the dangers of said new drug
Ah yes, the lies. The lies which every drug manufacturer lists [jnj.com] on their site [pfizer.com] for the public to see.
NOW they have them listed. And yet on page fucking one of this "fact" sheet dated December 2022 (two years after the outbreak), a large warning box appears:
FOR 12 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER
And yet the Mayo clinic lists the Pfizer vaccine available for kids 6 months and older...? Gotta love the fucking clear guidance here. /s
I wonder how many more perfectly healthy children will need to fall over dead in order for you to believe Greed exists in every large corporation.
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Here you go,
The dosage for small children is different than adults, they are even labelled differently.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/c... [cdc.gov]
I wonder how many more perfectly healthy children will need to fall over dead in order for you to believe Greed exists in every large corporation.
Well first you need to bring some real evidence of children "falling over dead" and second if you really think the incentive structure exists for a private company to intentionally murder it's customers because they are incentivized to then your conclusions should be that we need to abandon capitalism immediately and nationalize every critical industry because they simply
Re: Sanitorium (Score:1)
It's not uniquely American at all. If American health policy creates a drug resistant superbug, that's the whole world's problem.
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Sorry, I was alluding to the profit issue.
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No it won't. It is in the company's best interest to preserve the actual value of the product. Right now they have a unique selling point, which they can leverage to increase their sale price. If the bacteria become resistant to this antibiotic as well, then they lose this unique property and they're no more valuable than similar products.
Plus, you know, the drug company can easily set up these in-patient facilities themselves. It's an extra avenue of profits!
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AIUA they will want to milk it for all it's worth before their patent expires. After that, anybody's dog can make it and undercut their price.
I wonder how long it takes for ABR to evolve?
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I wonder how long it takes for ABR to evolve?
Antibiotic resistance (to penicillin-class drugs) was reported by the early 1950s. So, not more than about 5 years.
Since almost all classes of antibiotics are derived from wild organisms (ultimately, after much lab tinkering and investigation ; a human-intended antibiotic candidate that destroys 10% of patient's livers isn't going to get approval - so you need to modify the molecule to reduce that toxicity), then their wild target organisms have already probably some modest degree of resistance. But since
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Re:Sanitorium (Score:5, Informative)
he "actual value" of natural immunity was ruthlessly attacked on for years during COVID, because profits.
It was ruthlessly attacked because it's bullshit. Just ask [imgur.com] these [imgur.com] folks [businessinsider.com] how well [businessinsider.com] "natural immunity" [nbcnews.com] worked [businessinsider.com].
Here's a sign [googleusercontent.com] whch illustrates the point of how "natural immunity" doesn't work.
Apparently you've had covid based on your mental deficiencies [cnn.com].
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We need to have a conspiracies.slashdot.org
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Go here : http://most.of.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]
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Also vaccines are natural immunity; your natural immune system gets exposed to foreign antigens and naturally prepares to defend against it. Measles parties are the same sort of concept of artificially exposing your immune system but using live pathogen. And of course there's nothing natural about importing a disease from another continent via airplane, so exposing yourself to an artificially imported pathogen isn't particularly more natural if you do it via airplane than via needle.
Really you just have to
Re:Sanitorium (Score:4, Insightful)
The "actual value" of natural immunity was ruthlessly attacked on for years during COVID, because profits
Not quite, as we have gone on natural immunity has both won and lost and the fact has been known for a long while natural immunity is effective, it is not more effective that a regular vaccine schedule and natural immunity + vaccination seems to be the strongest immunity you can get, better than either alone.
The reason the natural immunity crowd had to get shit on is because 90% of them were absolutely operating in bad faith. They didn't have a measured, studied reason to push that, it was an easy way to be antivax without actually saying it.
It is no longer 2020, it's 2023 and there are no government forever mandates as were told there would be so roll with natural immunity if you want, lot's of people are today and the outcomes are not great for them.
Also natural immunity as and individual choice is one thing but using it as the basis for a public health policy is not just unworkable because it can be so varied from individual to individual (how strong is their immune system going in, how much viral load were they exposed to?) but it is completely medically unethical to have a policy of encouraging people to be infected with full strength infection for no real benefit over the vaccination where the risk profile is microscopic in comparison. Nobody would offer natural immunity as a solution to smallpox, or measles or ebola, that would be silly. Just look at the outcomes from any pandemic before 1950, pretty bleak stuff.
You want to take the profit motive out of medical care because it provides terrible incentives? Me too, that's why I support universal, not-for-profit models and vote accordingly.
What we actually need a cure for. (Score:2)
That might cut into someone's profit.
And this is why we should stop wondering "wut happened" when we pull some inexplicable artifact from the sands of time that would suggest we humans were some kind of highly advanced race thousands of years ago. We were. Then the Disease of Greed came along and damn near wiped us all out. Keep digging. We'll probably find we were stupid enough to do it more than once. Beneath the topsoil lies thousands of years of human ignorance, which is timeless.
Wanna find the ultimate drug? Find a cure for the Dise
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> Then the Disease of Greed came along and damn near wiped us all out.
Optimistic, aren't you.
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>> That might cut into someone's profit.
Only short term.
On the long term, it's the the exact opposite.
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That would be sane. Or actually make the patient financially liable if they do not take the stuff as long as they need to. In-patient-only punishes everybody and that does not sit right with me. Some people actually can do this right and understand why it is important to not stop as soon as you feel better. Obviously, there are too many clueless nil wits just give these to everybody with no monitoring, but why should that mean everybody suffers?
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The patient may well recover at a microbe load of 100 microbes/ml of blood. But to avoid the microbe transferring it's resistance genes into wild-type natural relatives at a sufficient rate to avoid the wild population developing significant resistance, you may need to get the patient's load down to 1 microbe/ml of blood.
Who pays, when the patient does not need the treatment, while wider society does. Particularly if continuing to take the treatment als
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And forego that sweet, sweet profit?
What are you, a commie?
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Killing DRBs is trivially easy. The trick is doing that without killing the host.
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They forgot to include that part in my contract.
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Where does this bullshit come from?
Who, again, is the one that gets their pills for free and which group has to pay for each and every single one of them? And who, in turn, has a motivation to sell a few of them to recover the cost?
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Men would too if they only had a purse to store them in.
Bullshit comes from the Bull. (Score:2)
>> Where does this bullshit come from?
The Bullshit comes from the Bull.
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>> Where does this bullshit come from? The Bullshit comes from the Bull.
Golf clap. That, right there, is the quote of the day for me. Bravo, fellow netizen. Bravo!
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Where does this bullshit come from?
Who, again, is the one that gets their pills for free and which group has to pay for each and every single one of them? And who, in turn, has a motivation to sell a few of them to recover the cost?
Indeed, and that isn't even the worst of his bullshit, over here in the UK (and over in Europe) you get the full course of anti-biotics, you just don't get them unless they'll do some good instead of American doctors handing them out like candy because they get a kickback from the pharmaceutical company (please note, I'm not one of those "big pharma" nutters, I just don't want them offering incentives to medical professionals). The American addiction to antibiotics is so bad you've got people picking up Zit
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Americans in general take antibiotics for a "full course" of however long the prescription lasts
When I try to find statistics on this, I can only find comparisons between small groups of countries, and none of the studies I've found compare America to Europe. Could you please provide a link? I did try to find something on my own first.
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If only.
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