Actually t-keela, I do happen to be an expert on the subject as I’ve been working with bacteria ever since I graduated from Michigan State with my degree in… you got it, MICROBIOLOGY!
Quadop you’re right, or course, but you have to admit that Mycobacterium spp. has some special characteristics that most other bacteria don’t share.
First of all, Mycobacterium grows very slowly. Second, it’s known for it’s resistance gaining ability. In fact, when we run air strips, the Myco colonies won’t grow for about a week. We also use a media that would kill everything else as we throw every antibiotic but the kitchen sink on it. But it’s great for isolating the Myco (which are cool because they look like scabs).
However, when it comes to most bacteria that are common pathogens, such as a run-of-the-mill gram neg, it is much harder to confer resistance. And in fact, putting them on something such as our Myco agar will kill them immediately. When I want resistant colonies, I generally have to use a bacteriophage.
I am in no way not recommending that people not take their entire prescription, but the reasons for this aren’t as simple as conferring resistance.
Thanks. My family thinks I overreact when I get a cold, but I freaking HATE to be sick. I cannot stand it. And this last cold, as you guys will remember in my Pit thread, was pretty nasty. Especially without water.
lightstrand, you make good points. But as my old ID professor, Dr. John Bartlett always told me, in vitro is not in vivo. He’s a strong advocate of the appropriate use of antibiotics to reduce resistance.
Here’s a link to one of his articles in “annals of Internal Medicine”. It specifically targets the issue of antibiotics for upper respiratory infections, and deals tangentially with the topic of acquired resistance.
I agree…it pisses me off when people over use antibiotics. I too am one of those people that doesn’t buy antibacterial soap, since the regular stuff kills germs just fine. Pretty soon we’ll have bugs that nothing can kill…just because people want a nice placebo effect from real medicine.
Jman: Interesting you should bring that up. I myself doubt that omni-resistant strains are possible for the following reasons:
[ul]
[li]Sheer variety of antibiotics: It started with penicillin but now we have more antibiotics than (I suspect) most physicians could name. All of them work on the same general principles but they have enough differences among them to be considered seperate threats for the bacterial genome to work against.[/li][li]Gradual loss of resistance: The same evolutionary processes that grant resistance work to take it away once the evolutionary pressure of a specific drug is gone. Rapid mutation means that there is a high chance of bacterial colonies finding the correct genetic sequence to fight the drug, but the same mutations make them equally likely to lose that sequence once the colony can survive without it. The abovementioned ‘drug rotation’ plans work on this principle, and they have reported success.[/li][li]Completely new generations of drugs: I know it isn’t wise to hang one’s hat on vapor, but I think the current explosion of knowledge about how proteins interact will lead directly to new classes of drugs that directly target expressions of a bacteria’s genome that are tough to change.[/li][/ul]Even considering the foregoing, it is still a major health risk to have multi-resistant strains of anything floating around. No disease can be described as wholly benign as people with compromised immune systems already know. Drug resistance compromises our collective immune system, and we don’t yet know how bad that could be.