Month: November 2018

OECD Suggests 5 Steps to Save Us

The article at Reuters says that in some countries resistance is already insanely high, and predicted to get worse:

In low and middle-income countries, drug resistance is high and projected to grow rapidly. In Brazil, Indonesia and Russia, for example, between 40 percent and 60 percent of infections are already drug resistant, compared to an OECD average of 17 percent, and AMR rates are forecast to grow between 4 and 7 times faster than the OECD average between now and 2050.

They suggest the following to get on top of the problem:

  • better hygiene
  • ending over-prescription of antibiotics
  • rapidly testing patients to ensure they get the right drug for infections
  • delaying antibiotic prescriptions
  • delivering mass media campaigns

Every government should be promoting the fact that doctors giving antibiotics to people who don’t need them could kill us.

Farms and Antibiotics

Wired have an article on this, and it highlights the likelihood of farms being a major contributor to antibiotic resistance.

Outside of experimental conditions, it’s never been possible to prove that this antibiotic given to that animal gave rise to this bacterium that ended up in that human. But this new work dives so deeply into the genomics of bacterial adaptation in food animals and humans, it proves the link that ag would rather deny.

Among the many strains they found was one known as H22, which was present on chicken meat and in people, and carried genetic markers indicating it had occupied the guts of poultry first, and then adapted to humans.

Staphylococcus Epidermidis Spreading in Australia

Staphylococcus epidermidis has evolved in Australia to be resistant to two unrelated, major antibiotics. It seems to be heading the way of Europe where it is resistant to all antibiotics.

The current guideline for treating infections uses a combination of these two major antibiotics because they have been thought to protect one another against developing resistance.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/new-drug-resistant-superbug-spreading-in-victorian-hospitals

Having an operation is becoming more and more of a risk.