The Briefing Room
General Category => Health/Education => Topic started by: bigheadfred on January 15, 2017, 04:56:19 pm
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The alarm bells sounded on November 18, 2015.
Antibiotic resistance is usually a slow-moving crisis, one of the reasons its danger can be hard to convey. One by one, over the years, the drugs used to fight the most stubborn infections have fallen by the wayside as bacteria have evolved resistance to them. For certain infections, the only drug left is colistin. Then on November 18, 2015, scientists published a report in the British medical journal The Lancet: A single, easily spreadable gene makes the bacteria that carry it resistant to colistin, our antibiotic of last resort.
Chinese scientists had found this gene, called mcr-1, in pig farms and on meat in supermarkets. Why pigs? Herein lies in the irony. Colistin is an old drug and, by modern standards, not a great one. It can cause severe kidney damage. As scientists developed better antibiotics over the decades, colistin fell out of human use. So in China, farmers started using it by the tons in animals, where low doses of antibiotics can promote growth.
Now it’s come full circle. Bacteria have evolved resistance to so many of those “better” antibiotics that colistin is critical for human health again. China didn’t use colistin in humans, but many countries including the U.S. do as a last resort.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/colistin-resistance-spread/512705/
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And it's not like we have a nice pipeline of new antibiotics on the way.
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I have total faith that our scientists will come up with something with the governments help to combat this potential end to humanity.....
Hey, Cowboy's and Green Bay tonight. Who wants a beer!
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I have total faith that our scientists will come up with something with the governments help to combat this potential end to humanity.....
Hey, Cowboy's and Green Bay tonight. Who wants a beer!
We need to be able to mutate faster than the bugs.