Post antibiotic era
Discussion
EagleMoto4-2 said:
I believe there is, in that if someone is in such a dire situation they can be offered experimental drugs with the proviso that they understand the risk to their health, taking something that hasn't been fully tested yet.
Sorry yes in that context a drug in clinical trials could potentially be accelerated by consent. The issue with the antibiotic "thing" is that there may well be no candidate compounds as yet due to the unfavourability of the business case. EagleMoto4-2 said:
Future antibiotic candidates could already be in the pipeline, but as an outbreak of antibiotic resistant bacteria hasn't spread to the masses yet, the tabloids havent had the need to pick up and report on them.
The oft-mentioned hospital super bug qualifies as a good example of a highly antibiotic resistant bacteria that is widespread (relatively speaking):[i]"MRSA is actually resistant to an entire class of penicillin-like antibiotics called beta-lactams. This class of antibiotics includes penicillin, amoxicillin, oxacillin, methicillin, and others.
S. aureus is evolving even more and has begun to show resistance to additional antibiotics. In 2002, physicians in the United States documented the first S. aureus strains resistant to the antibiotic, vancomycin, which had been one of a handful of antibiotics of last resort for use against S. aureus. Though it is feared that this could quickly become a major issue in antibiotic resistance, thus far, vancomycin-resistant strains are still rare."[/i]
EagleMoto4-2 said:
To be honest it will only be people with compromised immune systems who will initially be at risk if such a scenario were to take place. I was probably less than 10 years old when I last took an antibiotic for something.
Whilst it's not "end of the world is nigh" stuff, yet, the use of antibiotics is central to modern medical practices; it's not just doctors prescribing them out of habit, they're a huge player in the accelerated recovery (and increased survival rates) from surgical procedures.GnuBee said:
I think the Ebola situation was slightly different in so far as they already had a candidate compound (or compounds) which means they were post discovery phase and almost certainly were moving into the latter stage of clinical trials. There's no mechanism, as far as I'm aware, that fast-tracks a compound from discovery to human use in , for example, a few months or a year.
The other thing is Ebola is a single virus (albeit with a few sub-variants) - with bacteria you're looking at thousands of different types, so you need broad-spectrum antibiotics, not one that treats a single bacteria. Monty Python said:
The other thing is Ebola is a single virus (albeit with a few sub-variants) - with bacteria you're looking at thousands of different types, so you need broad-spectrum antibiotics, not one that treats a single bacteria.
Bacteria are typed, within the various species, but "broad-spectrum" more strictly refers to antibiotics that are effective against both "Gram-positive" and Gram-negative" bacteria. (Gram is the stain used to show them up on a microscope slide, and the 'positive' ones are harder to kill) It has been more usual to use a narrow-spectrum or 'specific' antibiotic to which the infection in known to be sensitive, when the conditions indicate what the infection is, rather than wait for a lab tests.But resistance appears more and more. Now, gonorrhea has appeared in the UK that is resistant to the drug that has dealt with it until now.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/18/dru...
John
Nanoparticles containing lactoferrin - http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and...
Whilst interesting it is more a triumph of publicity than a revolution in antibiotic therapy.
Whilst interesting it is more a triumph of publicity than a revolution in antibiotic therapy.
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