A Way Our of Our Antibiotic Crisis

August 28, 2015 by

July 24, 2015

By Medical Discovery News

A petri dish

Antibiotic resistance occurs when strains of bacteria that infect people – such as staph, tuberculosis, and gonorrhea – do not respond to antibiotic treatments. In America, 2 million people become infected with resistant bacteria every year and at least 23,000 die each year because of those infections. If nothing is done to stop or slow the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics, the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that we will find ourselves in a post-antibiotic world, in which minor injuries and common infections will be life-threatening once again.

The crisis arose primarily from three conditions. First, when people are given a weeks’ worth of antibiotics and stop taking them as soon as symptoms improve, they often expose the bacteria causing their infection to the medicine without killing it. This allows the bacteria to quickly mutate to further avoid the effects of the antibiotic. Second, antibiotics are over-prescribed. Most common illnesses like the cold, flu, sore throat, bronchitis, and ear infection are caused by viruses, not bacteria, so antibiotics are essentially useless against them. Yet they are prescribed 60-70 percent of the time for these infections. This once again provides bacteria in the body unnecessary contact with antibiotics. Third, tons of antibiotics are used every year in the agriculture industry. They are fed to livestock on a regular basis with feed to promote growth and theoretically for good health. But animals are also prone to bacterial infections, and now, to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which spreads to humans who eat their meat or who eat crops that have been fertilized by the livestock. The good news is that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working to focus antibiotic use on bacterial infections and regulate its use in livestock.

An easy solution to this problem might be to create new antibiotics, but it’s not that simple. It takes an average of 12 years and millions of dollars to research new antibiotics and make them available on the market, which is a huge investment considering they are normally only taken for up to 10 days. But there’s an even bigger challenge: microbiologists can only cultivate about 1 percent of all bacteria in the lab, including specimens that live in and on the human body. The ability to grow diverse bacteria is important because most antibiotics actually come from bacteria, produced as a defense against other microbes.

Slava Epstein, a professor of microbial ecology at Northeastern University, came up with an ingenious approach to solving this problem. He speculated that we are unable to grow these bacteria in the lab because we were not providing the essential nutrients they needed to grow. Working with soil bacteria, which are a huge source for developing antibiotics, he created the iChip. The iChip allows bacteria to grow directly in soil, which is their natural environment, while being monitored.

To date, about 24 potential antimicrobials have been identified from 50,000 bacteria that remain unable to grow in the lab. With possibly billions of bacteria left to grow and examine, the number of new drugs awaiting discovery is seemingly endless.

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The Catastrophe of Antibiotic Resistance

March 17, 2015 by

March 6, 2015

By Medical Discovery News

The Catastrophe of Antibiotic Resistance

The World Health Organization has categorized antibiotic resistance as “a major global threat” and multidisciplinary research teams estimate it could lead to 10 million deaths each year by 2050. Bacteria that cause disease in humans can become resistant to the drugs used to treat them, and this poses a growing problem to public health.

Antibiotics were first introduced in the 1940s with the discovery and development of penicillin and saved many people from otherwise life-threatening infections. This one class of drugs has had an incredible impact on decreasing the severity of infections and saving lives.

Lately antibiotics have become overused and misused, which has allowed bacteria to mutate in ways that render antibiotics relatively powerless. Bacteria were one of the earliest life forms on Earth and remain one of the most successful, present everywhere from Arctic glaciers to geothermal springs. Because they are masters of adaptation, exposure to antibiotics causes the bacteria to accumulate mutations that will allow them to ignore the action of the antibiotics. That’s why doctors should only prescribe an antibiotic in the likelihood of a bacterial infection, and why it’s important to take all of the prescribed doses of an antibiotic. Otherwise, you can give the bacteria enough contact with the antibiotic to mutate but not enough to kill them, and they can come back stronger.

Half the use of antibiotics does not come from a doctor’s office or hospital, but a farm. Chickens, pigs, cows, and other livestock raised for food production are fed antibiotics to prevent infections and for faster weight gain. Many countries now ban this practice, and in 2013 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily curtail the sale of antibiotics directly to famers. Today, 26 pharmaceutical companies will only issue antibiotics for animals with a veterinarian’s prescription.

Infections by drug-resistant bacteria can be twice as likely to result in hospitalization and death. And while some bacteria are resistant to a single antibiotic, others are resistant to many. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), multi-drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhea, and multi-drug-resistant Clostridium difficile are superbugs taking a devastating toll worldwide. Some bacteria have mutated against all forms of antibiotics normally used to treat them, leaving no effective treatment options. Such infections are occurring around the globe in both rich and developing countries.

Legislation in the U.S. Congress proposes to permanently ban antibiotics that are used in humans from being used in livestock as well.  However, some argue that there is not a clear link between the antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains generated in livestock practices and those seen in human disease, which requires more intense research to answer. Whatever the outcome, the emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria must be stopped. We also desperately need to develop new antimicrobials human use.

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Rise of Cavities

August 9, 2013 by

August 9, 2013

By Medical Discovery News

By 65, 92 percent of Americans have cavities in their permanent teeth, and an average of 3.28 teeth missing or decayed. The answer to why this is may not concern toothpaste ingredients or brushing time, but the lifestyles of ancient humans, as two new studies have discovered.

Humans used to live as hunter-gatherers, meaning they hunted for game and foraged for plants to eat. They were mainly nomadic, following herds to keep their food source. That changed about 10,000 years ago when agriculture was invented. They began to settle down in one place, raising livestock and growing crops for food. The human diet changed as it now included more starch from the grains they harvested.

The breakdown of starch begins with enzymes in the mouth that split the starch into shorter chains of sugars. The process continues in the stomach and the small intestine until the sugar chains are broken down into individual sugar molecules. This leaves a residue of sugar in a film on and between teeth, creating an ideal environment for the growth of bacteria. Two recent studies have documented how this change in diet caused bacteria associated with cavities and periodontal disease to emerge and eventually become widespread.

One group analyzed the bacterial DNA in samples of tarter from ancient teeth to monitor the changes in the types of bacteria that were present. What they found was a record of how humans have wrecked the bacterial ecosystem in their mouths. The increase in starchy foods caused sugar-loving bacteria to flourish.

With new DNA sequencing technologies, scientists isolated bacterial DNA from 34 teeth of Northern Europeans that are 7,000 to 400 years old, including the last hunter-gatherers from Poland and early farmers from Germany. Hunter-gatherers’ teeth harbored fewer types of cavity-causing bacteria, while early farmers’ teeth revealed a sharp increase in bacteria that cause tooth decay and periodontal disease. 

One bacterium, called Streptococcus mutans, contributes to cavities, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. In the mid-1800s, Strep mutans became even more dominant in the oral microbiome. This change correlates with the Industrial Revolution, which introduced refined grains and sugars. The simple sugars from these processed foods are the basis for microbial fermentation, which lowers the pH of the mouth and causes damage to tooth enamel.

The second study focused on changes in the DNA of Strep mutans alone from the present then going back in time. They sequenced the genomes of the bacterium from 57 people worldwide, then used some clever genetics modeling to calculate when the Strep mutans started expanding and diversifying. They think that occurred about 10,000 years ago, which correlates to the start of agriculture. 

Both studies show that the oral microbiome changed with the development of agriculture. What neither group has dealt with are the influences of modern behaviors like using toothpaste, adding chlorine and fluoride to drinking water, and more changes to the human diet, particularly the shift to fast food.

 For a link to this story, visit http://www.medicaldiscoverynews.com/shows/351-rise.html.

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