Antibiotic resistance a "catastrophic threat": UK medical chief

[UnrepentantLiberal]

LONDON (Reuters) - Antibiotic resistance poses a catastrophic threat to medicine and could mean patients having minor surgery risk dying from infections that can no longer be treated, Britain's top health official said on Monday.

Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said global action is needed to fight antibiotic, or antimicrobial, resistance and fill a drug "discovery void" by researching and developing new medicines to treat emerging, mutating infections.

Only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed and brought to market in the past few decades, and it is a race against time to find more, as bacterial infections increasingly evolve into "superbugs" resistant to existing drugs.

One of the best known superbugs, MRSA, is alone estimated to kill around 19,000 people every year in the United States - far more than HIV and AIDS - and a similar number in Europe.

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL6N0C0BXO20130311

[Marie Marie]

1. Once again, the pharmaceutical companies are the story.

I read years ago that the drug companies aren't interested in developing this type of drug. They put their money and research into drugs for chronic conditions - meaning the kinds of drugs that people have to take for extended periods or forever. Think statins or diabetic drugs. Antibiotics are for short term use and not as profitable for these pigs at the major pharm corporations.

[longship]

4. It's nature not the Pharma companies.

There are only so many sites on bacteria where antibiotics can act. That's just nature.

This problem has happened over just the last few decades since Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 which took the world into the antibiotic era. Regretfully, it seems that this era was doomed from the beginning as the bacteria are rather more clever than people may have imagined.

Then, every time someone got sick, they asked for antibiotics and physicians willingly prescribed them. Worse, when people would start taking their antibiotics they would stop before finishing because they felt better which is not a very good idea given bacteria's propensity to breed many generations quickly. They evolve quickly.

Not pharma's fault. Just the physicians who over prescribed, and their patients who asked for, all those antibiotics.

[Tumbulu]

2. feeding antibiotics to ruminants in feed lots so that they can eat grain

and fatten up quickly amounts to something like 70% of antibiotic sales in the US.

Big surprise that resistance is developing.

Ban antibiotic use in animal feeding situations ( use only for actual treatment of infection).

[area51]

5. +1 n/t

[drokhole]

3. Hopefully, we go full tilt into research of the microbiome...

...and find more ways to treat ailments with beneficial bacteria/"parasites":

HOW WORMS HELP YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM

Sculptors of Monumental Narrative (Radolab podcast on Helminth Therapy)

Fecal Transplants: A Clinical Trial Confirms How Well They Work