- Neurolimal
- Nov 3, 2012
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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:
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."
This is cool and all, just wanted to point out how badass it is that we're filling ourselves with symbiotic viruses, like sci fi supergenius race stuff
we are all Venom
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Feb 10, 2017 03:32
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May 10, 2024 01:41
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- Neurolimal
- Nov 3, 2012
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I don't want cow bile in my eye though
I know that some plant recipes are very effective against certain bacteria, there's a similar thing happening with horseradish and UTIs. I always wonder whether bacteria aren't just going to become resistant to those things as well, I don't imagine the underlying mechanism is fundamentally different from modern antibiotics
As was mentioned before, these antibiotic resistances consume organism resources that make the bacteria less competitive against those not resistant against the bacteria (in the absence of the antibiotic, obviously). My guess is that it could be a plan to make a pattern of propagating antibiotics, phage treatments, and other effective cures in periods so that, as they become resistant to one solution, a new solution is implemented + the old solution halted and the prior organisms are beaten by the originals and the new bact resistant to the newer solution
I'm not a scientist so for all I know I just said a bunch of gibberish, so vOv
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Feb 11, 2017 00:41
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Feb 10, 2017 03:32
