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Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

nature.com

101–110 of 139 posts

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#101

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…

Can you share sources, studies, be more specific ?

Interesting tidbit is Bret Weinstein's finding how all mice used for drug testing all over the world were coming from a single source and because of how they were bred, they had very long telomeres which made them much less susceptible to cancer.

Somebody got a Nobel for that, the situation supposedly has improved since, but a lot of assumptions (and substances approved) are still based on research which was using these mice.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#102

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 in the same way big oil knew that it was contributing to/causing global warming.

I feel like 2 out of these 3 are not like the other (i.e. pesticides are by definition usually pretty toxic and hormones can mess up living things in all sorts of ways). And even then you need to get more specific than the broad groups to say anything intelligent about them.

> Being anti conspiracy and overly trusting of certain (cough cough) fields of science denotes an inability to rationalize.

First step to being rationale is to be able to talk about it. You wont even say which field of science you don't like. Is it biology in general?

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> increased rates of cancer and other (cough cough) disorders Can someone translate dogwhistle to english here please?

The cough cough is not a reference towards respiration. At this point, I wish I would have left it out. But there are a myriad of illnesses that have been linked to environmental pollutants and a very high number of people will get offended if you point it out. Because the science isn't settled yet. I'll let you fill in the blanks there.

Oh what BS. If you are going to say something have the guts to say it. I honestly have no idea what disease you are referring to. Acne? Erictile dysfunction? Could be anything.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#104
> In bacteria grown in well-oxygenated laboratory conditions, the antidepressants caused the cells to generate reactive oxygen species: toxic molecules that activated the microbe’s defence mechanisms. [ ... ]

> However, in bacteria grown in anaerobic conditions, levels of reactive oxygen species were much lower and antibiotic resistance developed much more slowly. [ ... ]

> But in healthy humans, E. coli is found mainly in the large intestine, where conditions are anaerobic, meaning that the process described in the paper might not occur at the same rate in people, says Maier.

So the study shows that antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics if you test in oxygen-rich conditions. But that doesn't match conditions in the human body, so this may not even be relevant to humans.

Their next step is to study it in mice, which makes sense, but to me it seems like you can't conclude much right now.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#105
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.

> Yeah the gut microbiome is the next big thing for sure. It should be easy to study.

It won't be. We aren't able to culture most gut bacteria. Most die immediately in oxygen.

The best we can do at the moment is correlation.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#106
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.

Whenever someone says that the reason some health related thing isn't being used because it's not patentable and there's no money in it it's a pretty sure signal they don't know what they're talking about. Therapy methods, manufacturing methods, etc. are all patentable. As an example here is a patent that was granted around methods for selecting bacteriophages against specific bacteria [1]. If you search patent records for phage therapy there are tons of granted patents.

The original patent for insulin was given away by it's discoverers because they wanted everyone to be able to have access to inexpensive insulin. That hasn't stopped pharma companies from coming up with patents around formulations, manufacturing methods, delivery methods, etc. and making tons of money off of insulin.

Sibling comments have pointed out the real reasons it's not commonly used despite the promise. I just wanted to point out not being able to patent something is almost never a barrier for pharmaceutical companies if they think they can come up with a profitable therapeutic.

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10357522B2/en?q=phage+th...

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#107
post #89
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yay another phage thread! Phages do work, and we've treated a small bunch of people at Phage Australia for our clinical trial. There's a few things about using phages for treatments I think everyone should be aware of: (1) phages work!! The physicians we work with (and ourselves) are surprised every time they work. It's just really labor and time-intensive. (2) if antibiotics are "bite sized snacks" then phages are l…

I'm curious what drives customers to these services. Why would someone want to pay for a customized phage service? Someone who is taking lots of antibiotics or concerned about them?

No OP, but my guess would be people who have drug resistant bacterial infections and don't have another option.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#108
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.

Is there any evidence that antibiotic resistance in any significant way crosses from livestock pathogens to human pathogens? I had a medical professor lecturing a couple years back saying it was basically a myth.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#109
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.

Exactly. And as long as antibiotics are produced in factories where the left overs are just sent into the drain as well (see India, China), anything else it just a tip of the iceberg. We need true emergency antibiotics - not once that are produced the way they are produced and not once that can still be used for animals.

Do you have any sources verifying the claim that these countries dump harmful chemicals directly down the drain without any neutralizing chemistry?

Tragic and stupid beyond belief if this is true. Equivalent to using one's own kitchen sink as a toilet bowl.

Re: Antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics: study

#110
post #108
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.

Is there any evidence that antibiotic resistance in any significant way crosses from livestock pathogens to human pathogens? I had a medical professor lecturing a couple years back saying it was basically a myth.

Here's a simplified diagram from the CDC about antibiotic resistance from antibiotic use in livestock: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Antibiot...
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