Superbugs: The end of anti-biotics

[fromderinside]

Read "Genes in Conflict". Then, perhaps you'll understand there are several viable competitors for each target extant at most all situations. All Bomb#20 was doing was illustrate this principle to you.

As to my use of virus it is the greater challenge to immune system productivity. Bacteria as risks are but a subset of challenges to human health for which our immune system operates.

 

[untermensche]

Read "Genes in Conflict". Then, perhaps you'll understand there are several viable competitors for each target extant at most all situations. All Bomb#20 was doing was illustrate this principle to you.

As to my use of virus it is the greater challenge to immune system productivity. Bacteria as risks are but a subset of challenges to human health for which our immune system operates.

Don't tell me read something.

Explain the salient points if you think they are valid.

I understand how antibiotics work and what mechanisms bacteria have developed to defeat them.

The immune system has nothing to do with it.

The human immune system has not made any changes since antibiotics were introduced.

And the bacteria that did best against the immune system were the wild type. That is why they were the wild type. The type with best evolutionary success prior to the introduction of antibiotics.

 

[Bomb#20]

You gave no mechanism.

The mechanism of resistance is what the bacteria is doing or what it has to defeat the antibiotic.

This is how bacteria become resistant. By sheer chance one bacteria has a mutation that creates a mechanism which defeats an antibiotic. With asexual reproduction this trait will remain in all offspring unless another mutation occurs.

So the question was: Which specific mechanism of resistance to an antibiotic makes the bacteria more dangerous to people?

Ah, I see what the problem is. What we have here is a failure to communicate. No, the question was not "Which specific mechanism of resistance to an antibiotic makes the bacteria more dangerous to people?" What you actually asked was "Which specific mechanism that grants antibiotic resistance to the bacteria makes them more dangerous to humans?". I gave you not a chemical mechanism of antibiotic resistance, but an ecological mechanism that grants antibiotic resistance to a population -- a mechanism that makes a mutation acquired by sheer chance more likely to become prevalent in the microbial load. If that's not what you wanted, you need to write more carefully.

What you need to understand, though, is that you have no grounds to demand from beero1000 a "specific mechanism of resistance" that makes the bacteria more dangerous. Such a thing isn't implied by his hypothesis. What he said was "it is entirely possible, without the use of antibiotics, for drug-resistant bacteria to be even more dangerous to humans than their normal cousins." There doesn't need to be a cause-and-effect connection leading from a drug-resistance mechanism to heightened danger in order for the drug resistant variety to in fact be more dangerous. It's sufficient for resistance and dangerousness to be correlated for some other reason -- or even for them to be correlated by sheer chance. That's all he was pointing out was entirely possible.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to point out that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (the infamous MRSA) is in point of fact more contagious than methicillin-susceptible S. aureus. According to this NIH paper,

"...
In a surgical intensive care unit, Vriens et al. were able to prove that MRSA was more easily transmitted to other patients and nursing and medical staff than MSSA [65]
...
65. Vriens MR, Fluit AC, Troelstra A, Verhoef J, van der Werken C. Is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus more contagious than methicillin-susceptible S. aureus in a surgical intensive care unit? Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2002;23:491–494. doi: 10.1086/502094."​

So it turns out beero1000's hypothesis is perfectly correct. (And I can't believe I blew an hour of my life figuring out the secret incantation needed to make Google cough up that information.)

 

[fromderinside]

So it turns out beero1000's hypothesis is perfectly correct. (And I can't believe I blew an hour of my life figuring out the secret incantation needed to make Google cough up that information.)

More time on keyword investigation might help. It served me well.

 

[untermensche]

In a surgical intensive care unit, Vriens et al. were able to prove that MRSA was more easily transmitted to other patients and nursing and medical staff than MSSA

Conclusion of the study:

In our surgical ICU, MRSA seems to spread more easily than MSSA, probably because of selection under antibiotic pressure or a still unknown intrinsic factor within MRSA.

"Seems to spread" is the key term. The study was not conclusive. They did not prove it as you claim. It was a small study in 2002. I really don't know what the consensus is now about the transmission of MRSA vs MSSA in healthy people. But there is no study to demonstrate what will happen in time if antibiotics are removed from the picture. MSSA is very contagious. It isn't going away just because MRSA does slightly better when antibiotics are around. And doctors are not going to just let people die.

And of course "antibiotic pressure" should tell the reader that this is not to say it will happen in the absence of antibiotics.

What we are talking about is hypothetical.

Nowhere are they stopping the use of antibiotics in human infections.

 

[fromderinside]

Nowhere are they stopping the use of antibiotics in human infections.

Right. Instead CDC has directed doctors and hospitals to limit use of antibiotics to determined bacterial infections and to quit administering antibiotics for viral infections. At present antibiotics are still broadly used in meat industry for growth and productivity.

 

[untermensche]

Nowhere are they stopping the use of antibiotics in human infections.

Right. Instead CDC has directed doctors and hospitals to limit use of antibiotics to determined bacterial infections and to quit administering antibiotics for viral infections. At present antibiotics are still broadly used in meat industry for growth and productivity.

What you say is true but it has no relevance to what I wrote.

If a person comes into the hospital with a bacterial infection the doctors try to streamline treatment but many times they are forced to use a wide spectrum of attack before the bacteria can be isolated. And not all bacterial infections can be isolated.

 

[fromderinside]

Really? My post was not relevant to nowhere they are stopping use of antibiotics for human infections? Had you restrained yourself to bacteria you'd have a partial point, but even then treating sheep, chickens, cattle, with antibiotics that are then consumed by humans which has been somewhat curtailed a bit and using antibiotics with virus are more or less prohibited. Read, read, read ....

 

[untermensche]

Really? My post was not relevant to nowhere they are stopping use of antibiotics for human infections? Had you restrained yourself to bacteria you'd have a partial point, but even then treating sheep, chickens, cattle, with antibiotics that are then consumed by humans which has been somewhat curtailed a bit and using antibiotics with virus are more or less prohibited. Read, read, read ....

Eating animals that were treated with antibiotics has no effect on humans.

But the use of antibiotics in animals will make bacterial strains that infect animals become more resistant.

And doctors give people antibiotics for viral infections every day.

 

[fromderinside]

Really? My post was not relevant to nowhere they are stopping use of antibiotics for human infections? Had you restrained yourself to bacteria you'd have a partial point, but even then treating sheep, chickens, cattle, with antibiotics that are then consumed by humans which has been somewhat curtailed a bit and using antibiotics with virus are more or less prohibited. Read, read, read ....

Eating animals that were treated with antibiotics has no effect on humans.

But the use of antibiotics in animals will make bacterial strains that infect animals become more resistant.

And doctors give people antibiotics for viral infections every day.

Processed products like milk can contain residues of antibiotics fed to animals and be ingested by humans. On top of the previously mentioned effects common or similar bacterial being treated in animals have on resistance of those bacteria to human taken antibiotics is well established.

Agricultural Applications for Antimicrobials. A Danger to Human Health: An Official Position Statement of the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists http://www.cag.uconn.edu/ces/meatsystems/news_4_1959373719.pdf

It is standard policy to forego antibiotics as treatment for most common viral infections. That they are still used to treat virus is testimony to both the profits generated for pharma and to the greed of some doctors.

 

[Bomb#20]

It is standard policy to forego antibiotics as treatment for most common viral infections. That they are still used to treat virus is testimony to both the profits generated for pharma and to the greed of some doctors.

And to the uncertainties of diagnosis. It's perfectly normal for symptoms to point to infection without being very specific as to what the infecting organism is; it's also perfectly normal to prescribe an antibiotic based on the game-theoretic analysis that if it's bacterial you might be doing the patient good and if it's viral you're doing him very little harm.

 

[untermensche]

Eating animals that were treated with antibiotics has no effect on humans.

But the use of antibiotics in animals will make bacterial strains that infect animals become more resistant.

And doctors give people antibiotics for viral infections every day.

Processed products like milk can contain residues of antibiotics fed to animals and be ingested by humans. On top of the previously mentioned effects common or similar bacterial being treated in animals have on resistance of those bacteria to human taken antibiotics is well established.

Agricultural Applications for Antimicrobials. A Danger to Human Health: An Official Position Statement of the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists http://www.cag.uconn.edu/ces/meatsystems/news_4_1959373719.pdf

It is standard policy to forego antibiotics as treatment for most common viral infections. That they are still used to treat virus is testimony to both the profits generated for pharma and to the greed of some doctors.

The problem with using antibiotics in animals is that whenever antibiotics are used resistant bacteria begin to emerge.

The problem is not humans eating metabolized "residues". The problem is the resistant bacteria.

That's why pharmacists are concerned.

And the reason antibiotics are used for viral infections is because patients demand them and doctors are service oriented and need to retain customers and maintain customer satisfaction. And the doctor doesn't know for certain it is a viral infection. But many times it is.

 

[fromderinside]

I agree. The problem with doctors wishy washy service oriented perspective is that they are the guards at the gate of health. The argument you just presented is very similar to that used by those who prescribe narcotic mimics and derivatives to those who say they feel pain. We need a better option if the mantra "do no harm" is to mean something.

 

[barbos]

Pressure from one antibiotic makes bacteria more resistant to this particular antibiotic but it makes it generally weaker against other antibiotics and natural immune system. So you don't have to stop using all antibiotics. You just need to cycle them. Stop using old ones completely for some time. Also animals should have separate lines of antibiotics so that animal farms don't become human superbug farms.