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As a dash of hope, phage therapy is looking promising alternative for antibiotics. Antibiotics are hard to develop for reasons already stated, but we already have other tools to kill bacteria with: Viruses. Bacterial viruses are relatively safe for us to use (because they can't really jump from bacteria to us; the transcriptional/translational machinery are too different) and tend to be highly specific in their targeting. They also reproduce themselves, so dosing is pretty much only whatever threshold is necessary to set a minimum population of virus in the target region. Phage therapy was the way the world was going until Fleming discovered his silver bullet, and then it ended up isolated to the Eastern bloc, right up until Stalin decided that this whole "genetics" thing sounded a bit too Hitler-y. Now, the only place that's been using it with any level of regularity has been the Republic of Georgia. We're already seeing a return in the food industry; it's pretty much guaranteed any goons in North America have eaten virus-laced foods for years now without knowing it. It's also seeing a start of a return to the medical world, a summary of which can be found here. There's even evidence phages might be able to infiltrate biofilms, something antibiotics persistently struggle with. (I tried to link publicly available docs where possible.) None of this is to downplay the seriousness of antibiotic resistance, incidentally; just to offer the idea that there is hope in a world where we have basically pissed away our silver bullet. Also, hey, if it gets more people interested in viruses, that just makes my day. e: Well, gently caress me, beaten again. 2e: Fojar38 posted:Hope you're prepared to invade China and India because virtually all superbugs come from that region and they don't seem interested in sustainable agricultural reform. China's also where we get all our super-deadly influenza strains from lately, because they keep pigs and chickens together. Pigs are basically giant mixing vessels for influenza viruses because their respiratory tracts contain the same sugar moieties found in the respiratory tracts of humans and the GI tracts of birds. Honestly, a lot of this can just be summed up as "China's agricultural system hosed it." Axelgear fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 04:21
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Viruses do more than just kill; they also play a major role in nutrient cycling. Marine snow - the thing which feeds a lot of life in the lower layers of the ocean, beneath the photic zone - likely has viruses play a big role in its formation. Viruses explode cells, releasing their sticky contents, which gunk up, aggregate, and sink. Viruses themselves are also non-motile and can carry materials down to the ocean floor, helping sequester carbon. They're pretty darn great. reagan posted:Holy poo poo, sorry. Nice post. Thanks! I can't speak for your researcher, friend, but everything I've heard from the people I know in the field makes it sound promising. The FDA is approving more and more tests with it and the results seem promising, albeit small scale at present. Even the immune response doesn't seem to hamper them. The one downside of viruses is that we actually need to discover, isolate, and culture them. That process is easier than finding new antibiotics but that's still relative.
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Feb 9, 2017 06:03
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For whatever it's worth, colistin wasn't going to save us anyway; it's a pretty narrow spectrum antibiotic, affecting some but not all gram negatives; it won't do dick to save you from, say, a Staph infection. That's nothing to sniff at, but not all antibiotics are made equal. Polymixin resistance is only worrying because our Big Boys that are the tetracyclins and the streptomycins and the penicilins are losing their efficacy. The Last Resort antibiotics tend to be really nasty to the patient, really narrow spectrum, or both. Once we piss away the tetracyclins (literally; their release in urine contributes to this), the penicilins, the sulfonamides... Then we're beyond hosed. Unless phages turn out to be as good as we hope, anyway.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:08
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Hey, so, sorry for resurrecting this thread, but this seemed like something people might enjoy. It's only ("only") a mouse model, but it shows promise, and that these techniques/therapies are in development.
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Mar 14, 2017 14:59
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