Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 139 posts

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#31

Post by John23832 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #19

I’m a bit confused why antibiotic resistant bacteria is so scary. My layman understanding is that antibiotics gum up the mechanism to produce the cell wall. Sure, bacteria may develop where the mechanism works a bit differently and is not affected by a certain chemical. But it seems like “disrupt cell wall production” is a huge target and we could probably disrupt it in many other ways. Humans lack a cell wall entire…

> I’m a bit confused why antibiotic resistant bacteria is so scary.

It's scary because if you can't kill the bacteria, the bacteria kills you.

--

> My layman understanding is that antibiotics gum up the mechanism to produce the cell wall.

This layman's idea is incorrect. Not all antibiotics work on cell walls. Not all bacteria have defined cell walls. Look up Mycoplasma.

--

> Is the concern that studies to confirm lack of effects will take too long? Not that it’s a difficult engineering challenge? Couldn’t we be doing this research already, of finding other ways to disrupt the mechanism?

Most of the antibiotics we have were either found by accident, or computed derivatives of something that was found by accident. We've exhausted the low hanging fruit. More complex antibiotics often have bad side effects (ciprofloxacin) or are effective enough that we use them in the most guarded fashion to keep them in the chamber when needed (carbapenem derivations).

--

There's a metric crap ton of money going into the research of new antibiotics, it's just not straight forward.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#32

Post by meindnoch »

CollinEMac wrote: post #26
stackbutterflow wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is phages. But last time I went into the rabbit hole the TLDR was that it is not patentable so there's no money in it. And everyone needs a different phages cocktail. I sleep at night knowing that push come to shove someone will step in and mass produce machines to create personal phage cocktails.

Could someone explain this to me like I'm 5?

phages = bacteriophages = viruses that kill bacteria [1]

There's an arms race between bacteria and humans: bacteria infect humans → humans develop antibiotics to kill bacteria → bacteria evolves resistance against antibiotics → humans develop new antibiotics to kill resistant bacteria → bacteria evolves resistance to new antibiotics → ...

Developing more and more new antibiotics for resistant bacteria is slow and expensive. Bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) on the other hand would naturally evolve with the bacteria, like how COVID evolved new strains in response to our vaccines.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#33

Post by nerdponx »

ceejayoz wrote: post #24
lazyfanatic wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

once I know you have an agenda, I invalidate what you have to say.

Everyone has an agenda.

I'm not sure if this is a corollary or a counterpoint to what you're trying to say here, but not all agendas are equivalent.

One person's agenda might be to make as much money as possible irrespective of consequences. Another person's agenda might be to decrease asthma rates. The fact that both people have some kind of agenda is basically irrelevant.

This is the same hole as in the classic "both sides" political attitude.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#34

Post by Traubenfuchs »

CollinEMac wrote: post #26
stackbutterflow wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is phages. But last time I went into the rabbit hole the TLDR was that it is not patentable so there's no money in it. And everyone needs a different phages cocktail. I sleep at night knowing that push come to shove someone will step in and mass produce machines to create personal phage cocktails.

Could someone explain this to me like I'm 5?

Not just higher life is plagued by viruses, bacteria as well. And bacteriophages are viruses that only target specific bacteria.

They are among the most abundant "forms of life" in the whole world, as google details:

> There are up to ten times more phages in the oceans than there are bacteria, reaching levels of 250 million bacteriophages per millilitre of seawater.

If we were able to quickly find the right phage for bacteria that causes infection, that bacteria would have no chance. And we do know that for every bacteria there would be infinite phage variants they just can not defend themselves against by design. From what we know bacteria, all life in general will always stay vulnerable to viruses.

The problem is that our science on finding, producing and using bacteriophages is extremely limited for technical and financial reasons.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#35

Post by bfgoodrich »

jklinger410 wrote: post #9

Factory farm companies have known that anti-biotics, hormones, and pesticides are causing increased rates of cancer and other (cough cough) disorders in the same way big oil knew that it was contributing to/causing global warming. Every person in the comments across the internet saying the rise in all of these disorders was just about self-reporting have been unknowingly shilling for big food. Being anti conspiracy a…

[dead]

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#36

Post by toast0 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #19

I’m a bit confused why antibiotic resistant bacteria is so scary. My layman understanding is that antibiotics gum up the mechanism to produce the cell wall. Sure, bacteria may develop where the mechanism works a bit differently and is not affected by a certain chemical. But it seems like “disrupt cell wall production” is a huge target and we could probably disrupt it in many other ways. Humans lack a cell wall entire…

> I’m a bit confused why antibiotic resistant bacteria is so scary.

Because it can makes otherwise simple to treat bacterial infections into an ICU stay. ICUs don't have a lot of spare capacity, and it's difficult to add more.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#37

Post by John23832 »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #12
tokai wrote: post #4

Interesting and potentially dangerous. But as long as many millions of pigs are covered in antibiotic foam (which is just rinsed off into the drain), I'm not gonna lie sleepless over this. Resistant bacteria will cause humanity huge troubles if we don't manage to do something radical soon.

The answer is phages. But last time I went into the rabbit hole the TLDR was that it is not patentable so there's no money in it. And everyone needs a different phages cocktail. I sleep at night knowing that push come to shove someone will step in and mass produce machines to create personal phage cocktails.

Phages are not the silver bullet that people think they are.

First they're difficult to make and store (antibiotics are mostly shelf stable... phages aren't). Second, they are not broad spectrum. Third, (at least in the US) phage therapy hasn't taken off because the initial forays into phages showed that they can cause reactions. Lastly, not all bacteria have phage counterparts.

So if you even could use phages, you're looking at weeks of testing to determine what bacteria to target, before production. You could keep a library of phages for known bacteria, but that library would be highly specific.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#38

Post by nerdponx »

andy_ppp wrote: post #7

I wonder if antidepressants protect your gut microbiome and the SSRI aspect is over stated. Would be very hard to disambiguate those two effects I suspect.

But SSRIs reverse depression symptoms, they don't prevent it from happening in the first place. so the mechanism would have to be not just protection but some kind of restoration or rebalancing, maybe by selectively protecting some bacteria but not others. That seems a little less plausible to me.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#39

Post by andy_ppp »

lr4444lr wrote: post #30
andy_ppp wrote: post #7

I wonder if antidepressants protect your gut microbiome and the SSRI aspect is over stated. Would be very hard to disambiguate those two effects I suspect.

That was exactly my first thought. We could definitely throw the SSRI efficacy into doubt though by sampling CS fluid or something for actual serotonin content in cohorts who are subjectively feeling improved by SSRIs.

It would also explain why SSRIs take time to work - as I understand it the SSRI action is immediate and yet it takes weeks for people to notice the effects.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#40

Post by throwaway0x7E6 »

dysoco wrote: post #20
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last sentence is often used to criticize economics but haven’t heard it on harder “sciences” before.

Not to diss on OP's comment, but out of context it sounds exactly like what COVID deniers usually say.

it's remarkable how little time it took for the big pharma to become our greatest ally
Post reply on HN