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Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

nature.com

41–50 of 139 posts

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#41
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.

>TLDR was that it is not patentable so there's no money in it.

I think you are overlooking some of the major technical problems with phages. In no particular order:

1. The immune system develops antibodies for many phages.

2. Microbes develop resistance to phages.

3. Phage multiplication using host cell is a primary step for phage production, and this causes many (serious) adverse effects.

4. Only obligate lytic phages that lyse the bacterial cell directly instead of integrating its genome in bacterial DNA (temperate) are usable for phage therapy. Temperate phages play a major role in the exchange of genetic material between different bacterial strains and often contribute to the pathogenicity.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SSRIs aren’t the only medication that requires weeks to work.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#43
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.

Yeah the gut microbiome is the next big thing for sure. It should be easy to study. Food logs, mood logs, medication logs, next generation sequencing and maybe some metabolic profiling and we should be able to find interesting correlations. I know my mood changes drastically down when I fail to eat properly for a period of time.

As if omics research isn't hard enough, there's a confounding layer of privacy and incentive problems here.

From a science angle it makes more sense to just collect this data from everybody all the time and let the studies be post hoc explorations of that giant dataset. But how do you get people to cooperate when they have reason to believe that the data will be used against them?

Either we accept the diminished value of isolated study-at-a-time datasets (as we're doing now), we figure out how to do this kind of research through a layer of homeomorphic encryption which the layman trusts (a tall order), or we wait for an era with more trustworthy institutions (potentially a long time).

For this reason, I think it'll be like fusion power: the perpetual "next big thing".

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#44

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…

It sounds like you're saying the government has completely shit the bed in their regulatory duties, but I don't see you assign blame there at all for some reason.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#45

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.

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'r…

Isnt it that phages can be engeneered to a specific bacteria? Also the other way around. The can be programmed with the dna of the bacteria. So pcr the bacteria then make phages that atack them. My knowledge is bad . Could you elaborate where the engeneering problem is and the cost factors? Thanks

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#46

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…

> Factory farm companies have known that anti-biotics, hormones, and pesticides are causing increased rates of cancer and other (cough cough) disorders This may be true in specific cases... But surely isn't true in general. It's the role of science and government to find out which anti-biotics, which hormones, and which pesticides case increased rates of which cancers. As soon as there is evidence suggesting a specif…

> So far, I think the main failure in that process is that governments don't put enough money into science to find said evidence.

Couldn't agree more. The evidence of how ineffective the American scientific regulatory community is all around us.

An easy example is how fast rising yeast impacts gluten intolerance, or how high fructose corn syrup impacts insulin resistance or glucose response. Highly negative correlations here, even from the advent, but the potential revenue has outweighed the desire to protect Americans.

The truth is that American business sees citizens as two ways, suckers for making bad choices (while forcing those same choices down their throat), or simply unlucky. The rich avoid the obviously harmful aspects of America, while accepting the odds on the things they can't avoid.

Personally if I were very wealthy I would spend very little time in the United States.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#47

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…

> Factory farm companies have known that anti-biotics, hormones, and pesticides are causing increased rates of cancer and other (cough cough) disorders This may be true in specific cases... But surely isn't true in general. It's the role of science and government to find out which anti-biotics, which hormones, and which pesticides case increased rates of which cancers. As soon as there is evidence suggesting a specif…

> It's the role of science and government to find out which anti-biotics, which hormones, and which pesticides case increased rates of which cancers.

Not if you subscribe to the precautionary principle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

"The principle is often used by policy makers in situations where there is the possibility of harm from making a certain decision (e.g. taking a particular course of action) and conclusive evidence is not yet available. For example, a government may decide to limit or restrict the widespread release of a medicine or new technology until it has been thoroughly tested. The principle acknowledges that while the progress of science and technology has often brought great benefit to humanity, it has also contributed to the creation of new threats and risks. It implies that there is a social responsibility to protect the public from exposure to such harm, when scientific investigation has found a plausible risk. These protections should be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that provide sound evidence that no harm will result."

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#48
post #44

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…

It sounds like you're saying the government has completely shit the bed in their regulatory duties, but I don't see you assign blame there at all for some reason.

That is completely fair. But I'm not going to act like there aren't thousands of scientists and business people who are 100% aware of what is going on. Many of whom work jobs whose PURPOSE is to destroy the effectiveness of the government.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'r…

Isnt it that phages can be engeneered to a specific bacteria? Also the other way around. The can be programmed with the dna of the bacteria. So pcr the bacteria then make phages that atack them. My knowledge is bad . Could you elaborate where the engeneering problem is and the cost factors? Thanks

The problem is that they are highly specific. You would need the industrial machinery to manufacture a highly specific treatment. With anything in medicine/biology, specificity dramatically increases cost.

There's also the pre-treatment testing that would be necessary to determine what to target. There's also the shipment of a bacterial specimen that would be used to create a phage (which is something we don't do currently... we'll ship a specimen to a testing center, best case). Those are two different bacterial specimens needed. Then you have to ship the phages back. Alive. Then store and administer then properly. People fail to take their antibiotics properly. They're going to royally screw up phages.

What about bacteria that you can't culture (treponema pallidum, aka syphilis)?

All of this is in contrast to antibiotics. Is it gram positive or gram negative? Treat. Did it work? Yes, good. No, treat again. Did it work? Yes, good. No, test for resistance. Move to a stronger antibiotic and repeat.

You really don't even need to know what the exact bacteria is that you're targeting with antibiotics.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#50
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the implication here that antibiotics are more commercially viable, but phages are the real solution? I'm unfamiliar with phages, but a quick lookup revealed "virus that eats bacteria" and it's like, yeah… let's do that to combat bacterial infections. I'm guessing alignment between phage/bacteria is crucial.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but what I got was that there's nothing to patent because phages are found in sewers and mud pools as is. Also every individual with a bacterial infection needs a custom cocktail so there's no one-size-fits-all pill that can be mass produced. Phages also have their own caveats but I don't remember what it is. The TLDR is that in the worst case scenario we still have phages and as f…

As someone who knows nothing about biology, this as well as the limited shelf-life issue mentioned in other comments makes me wonder if something like “A collection of less specialized phages and a process by which they can be quickly programmed to go after a bacteria” could be patented.

I’m sure this is dumb because if it wasn’t somebody would have done it by now, though.

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