Since we have a gazillion different antibiotics now, what would happen if we simply decided to retire X number for Y years. Would bacteria lose resistance?
Likely not, unless there was some significant survival/reproductive cost to maintaining it. And there would only need be a small segment of the population that had maintained it to allow that resistance to spread rapidly across the world once the antibiotic was used again.
That is also part of it of course. We are competing not against bacteria in one body, or one town, or one country; a beneficial (from the bacteria POV) any where in the world now has the potential to spread every pretty quickly.
Agreed. However it is considered a tragedy every time the bacteria get the upper hand and kill us. We can kill 10^20 or more bacteria cells and they don’t even blink.
Another thing to consider (this is speculation, mind you) is that it’s entirely possible that the mutations that are handy in making bacteria resistant to various sorts of antibiotics are only an advantage when somewhat regularly exposed to them, and may be a disadvantage when not exposed regularly.
In other words, if certain antibiotics aren’t used so much, it’s possible that the general bacterial populations may become susceptible to them again, at least until they’re overused again.
The chances and advantages of success are the bigger issue here. We’re not longer in the “find a new antibiotic and save thousands of lives” era. It’s more like “spend decades and billions and maybe find a slight variant which may possible help a few people” era.
Even if your company were dedicated to the task, had an army of brilliant but completely selfless scientists willing to work night and day for pennies, and all the money in the world for equipment and tests, antibiotics aren’t the best use of your dollar. It’s more of a sideline you drop some cash into on the off-chance it produces something, while you put your focus on cancer treatments, genetics, and the major life-changing or -destroying syndromes.
We’ve invented a few classes of antibiotic that are distinct from natural products (vancomycin is a natural product btw) - but you’re right that natural products dominate the antibiotic landscape. Linezolid is a prominent non-natural example that was first in class in recent times, an oxazolidinone - sees heavy use AFAIK. The quinolones (e.g. ciproflaxin) would be another class not informed by any particular natural product.
Whether a natural product-derived antibiotic would see more rapid resistance than a non-natural product one I am not sure - it’s an interesting question. Resistance would seem to boil down to mutations in the bacterium target - usually a protein, disrupting binding of the antibiotic agent. That can happen with equal facility for a natural or non-natural products. We can design structural features into our antibiotics to protect against metabolic vulnerability, but that’s addressing a different question to fundamental resistance of natural v non-natural products.
For now… but when adults start dying of pneumonia and gangrene, and children start dying of scarlet fever and other diseases that are easily treated, you’d better believe that antibiotic research will become potentially a very lucrative line of research.
Dude. If bacteria followed your logic, it would be a breeze. But I don’t think they work that way.
Yeah and as noted in the thread, these measures are difficult enough to implement effectively in a medical environment. Now you’re gonna convince hundreds of millions of Joe Soaps to do better in their own homes? For many it simply wouldn’t be possible, because they do not have first world luxuries you take for granted.
Now you’re talking about viruses… the track-record of humans/viruses is not much in favor of humans… even ‘common’ cold is still common.
Quick someone let pfizer know about this conclusion.
In 1917 it took at least a few days for a human to get from one side of the planet to another. Nowadays it’s a matter of hours… how many people died from the 1918 outbreak? A worst-case epidemic now obviously would not end humanity, but as for its civilization… I wouldn’t be so sure. Thin veneer, not much of substance to hold it together… a few (hundred?) million deaths in a short time would hurt.
To answer OP… what use is being scared or worried for this… there’s nothing you can do about it any more than a comet coming through your roof.
And we already have vancomycin-resistant bugs.
“Antibiotic stewardship” was mentioned upthread. Part of this is being conservative in application: doctors should not hand out antibiotics to patients with viral infections just to shut them up, and patients who do receive antibiotics need to read and sign a document promising that they will finish the entire prescription (my dad, who is otherwise a smart man, has a habit of saving antibiotics :rolleyes:). But this has to be a worldwide effort. My understanding is that antibiotics are much easier for patients to get in some countries outside the US. If antibiotics can be abused anywhere, then that’s where the resistant bugs will develop, and eventually they’ll spread to places where antibiotics are more carefully managed.
The other part of stewardship is a globally-managed program of antibiotic rotation. Even with conservative use, resistance ot any antibiotic can be expected to develop over time. But if we stop using that antibiotic altogether, resistance would fade over time - and that antibiotic could become useful again. Worldwide cooperation and agreement on when/which antibiotics to use most and which to use least at any given time could help to accomplish this.
It’s probably possible to create antibiotics to which bacteria can’t develop resistance. This is the case with some antimicrobial compounds discovered in frogs.
The reason the peptides only kill bacteria is fascinating.
As an actively dating single guy, I’m not too excited about the arrival of Super Gonorrhea in North America.
“Can’t develop resistance” != “hard for bacteria to develop resistance.”
Such drugs may be useful for a longer period of time than other antibiotics, but resistance will eventually develop and so they will still require rotation if they are to become useful again in the future.
No. Something that lyses or punctures the cell membrane is primarily a mechanical process. That would be like saying that you can develop immunity to being hit with a hammer.
Antibiotics are kind of a haphazard way to fight infections anyhow. I think a few hundred years in the future antibiotics will be studied as a sort of cute, ancient technology that really helped out mankind rapidly until genetic engineering, nano technology, or whatever other future technology comes about. Antibiotics are kind of crude and they work due to some neat tricks but they are far from the only way from preventing and fighting bacterial infections in the future.
This is plain idiotic and irresponsible. We should at least have a spectrum of placebos with convincing sounding names, like “Terptimycin” or “Pennycillin” that a doctor could prescribe to shut those people up.
A few points to take into consideration:
–People can develop allergic reactions to antibiotics after years of use. And once you are allergic, you are never prescribed antibiotics which can have a cross-allergic reaction. People who are allergic to penicillin are not prescribed cephalosporins.
In my ancient years, I’ve now racked up allergies to sulfa and ciprofloaxin. When I get either a sinus infection or a urinary tract infection, I’m hard to treat. And oftentimes a sinus infection will take more than one course of antibiotics before it finally croaks. My record is five courses.
I don’t need a superbug to kill me. I just need to run out of antibiotics for the regular bugs!
–We do have many vaccines for once-deadly viral infections. Problem is, vaccines don’t do a DAMN bit of good when people refuse to take them! The thiomersal controversy was a bandwagon many hopped on, and there is an increasing percentage of the population walking around unvaccinated. I tell the ones I encounter: When your kid is incapacitated by a diphtheria epidemic, MY kid is gonna be the one taking care of the sick ones and cleaning up the mess!
~VOW
As a matter of fact, I have. Compared to the banana slug, my skull protects my brain from hammer blows pretty well. Not all hammer blows, but considerably more than not having a skull at all.
Many other organisms have evolved resistance to various other kinds of attacks. it seems foolhardy to say unequivocally that an organism of any particular classification can’t possibly evolve over time to resist a given threat.
I’m not a molecular biologist, but given the description of the mechanism, I think it’s pretty clear that bacteria would have to change their basic architecture in order to become immune. So is that possible. Maybe, but I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t be bacteria any more.
The frog’s peptides are just one example of the already referenced innate immune system. Innate mechanisms work pretty well; the problem is that they are often fairly nonspecific. It’s enough that one’s innate system is able to attack only bacteria; differentiating between bacteria you need and pathogenic ones is a whole 'nuther thing. In general innate mechanisms therefore location specific. Hence not great as systemic antibiotics.
Bacteria adapting to innate mechanisms is more difficult but generally not impossible. Change to charge of exposed bits of the cell wall and suddenly this one does not work any more. Can’t say I know how a bacteria would do that but I have great confidence that among the trillions and trillions of them out there, multiplying, multiplying, one would. Bacteria can adapt to virtually anything with enough consistent evolutionary pressure brought to bear.