"Antibiotic-boosting drug kills superbugs" ?????

dlowan- I am very pleased to hear about this. For many months, my husband suffered from a severe case of MRSA which he acquired in the community. Normally a bacteria that is seen in hospitals, MRSA is becoming prevalent in the US outside of the hospital setting.

After being given 8 infusions of vancomycin, the MRSA reappeared. He was then given 11 infusions of a new drug Cubicin, which was only approved by the US FDA in October 2003.

http://www.cubicin.com/images/cubicin_large_pi.pdf

I do not know if this drug is available outside of the US. Anyhow, the research that you have posted sounds very promising. Thanks for the information!

Most welcome.

I believe it is only a claim as yet.

Also - one assumes the bugs will develop immunity very fast - although - if it is used very carefully, can this process be slowed down?

dlowan- My understanding is that we have gotten ourselves into this pickle because of the overuse of antibiotics when unnecessary over the years. When I was younger, it was not uncommon for a doctor to prescribe an antibiotic for a cold..............a cold is a virus, and antibiotics don't work on them. The only time it was appropriate to prescribe an antibiotic, is when there was an indication of a secondary bacterial infection. But patients insisted on them, so the bacteria "found ways" to mutate, and foil the antibiotics.

Yes - I know - I guess I am wondering if judicious use of this technology might delay the development of bug immunity?

Not to mention mass antibiotic use in raising livestock - oy veh...

Though - given the cross species thing, I am wondering how relevant that is to development of immunity in bugs affecting humans?

Absent any iron-clad evidence to the contrary, it's very very very relevant. And a bone of contention in the veterinary community.



Any use will inevitably lead to resistance eventually. It's a simple numbers game. The key word is "judicious," and it's a tricky game, especially in human medicine. The pressure to please the patient -- to at least make them think that you're doing something proactive -- is very immediate. The danger of overuse of antibiotics, though much greater than the threats posed to most individual patients, isn't sitting in the clinic waiting room tapping its foot.

If I may digress this is a side effect of the general american paranoia of germs and dirt IMO....you have an immune system and it needs practice we don't go to the doctor for sniffles colds or even the flu...we get in bed or put the cubs in bed and work on the symptoms until the virus runs its course...and we're a healthy bunch squinney's only problem is that she washes her hands with anti bacterial soap every ten seconds.....

Digress away, man.

would you agree dog, that if people weren't so paranoid of every little germ and infection and didn't use antibiotics when an aspirin and liquids would do that we might be a little better off?

I promise to stop digressing now.

I agree Bear.

why are no scientists working on bacteriophages? there are apparently specific antigens to each bacteria, occurring naturally. It is simply a matter of isolating and then reproducing it in sufficient quanitities. The Russians were doing a lot of work on them but funding dried up and from the programme I saw, it looked as though the research would end. (this was pre-MRSA)

Docs are constantly throwing antibiotics at us. What's interesting though is if I say "we prefer not to" (my best Bartleby impression) they generally say, "oh, OK!" They seem resigned to the fact that mother wants medicine stat, and surprised when one says uh no. Sozlet just had an ear infection, not too bad, treated pain with Motrin and held on to the antibiotic scrip, she was better in about a week. (With very minor pain for the last 4 or 5 days of it. Only one night of really bad pain.)

It ain't digressing! 'Tis a nub of the problem.

Are there virophages?

anyone subscribe to the theory that all the antibiotics put into our food chain are helping create and sustain this problem? It makes sense to me.....

Great humanity has bought some more time....It was getting scary there for awhile..

Er - I think it is still being researched!

I'll give a tentative no. There are mechanisms whereby the immune system might produce antibodies to a viral antigen so that phagocytic cells (eg, macrophages) could recognize them, but I've never heard of any viral antigen that they could recognize without their being tagged by antibodies.



I don't know that antibiotics reach us directly through our food supply, but they do create antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that live in our food. Not hard at all to imagine how we might become infected with a resistant strain of salmonella, or e coli, or... name your infectious bug.




Oh, and to digress -- there is a (fairly) new virulent strain of cholera out there...

Oh - fabulous!!!

Thanks for the phage-info - fascinating.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Meant to include, but forgot, how the body deals with viral infections...

When a virus sets up residence in a cell and starts to replicate it, the cell takes bits of the virus and puts them on the outside of the cell. The immune system has cells called cytotoxic (or "killer") T cells that recognize this distress signal and kill the infected cell. This is actually the problem with HIV. Because the virus infects cells of the immune system (cells that produce antibodies), you end up with one part of the immune system methodically killing off cells of another part of the immune system. It's a virus with a highly developed sense of irony.