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Turns out the old saying, "Let the kids play and eat dirt," might’ve been right all along—who knew? All this time, they might've been giving themselves tiny doses of natural antibacterials without even realizing it.
Now, it'd be nice to keep those for as long as possible. Is regulation on the use of these feasible? I'd think that if your law just restricts its use on animals (which I believe is where the majority of antibiotic-resistance comes from) that would be easier to pass than if you tried to restrict its use on humans, but I don't know if there's precedent for it.
Turns out the old saying, "Let the kids play and eat dirt," might’ve been right all along—who knew? All this time, they might've been giving themselves tiny doses of natural antibacterials without even realizing it.
Everyone? That's not an unusual position by any means. It's known as the Hygiene Hypothesis.
It's great that we may have two new antibiotics! Now, it'd be nice to keep those for as long as possible. Is regulation on the use of these feasible? I'd think that if your law just restricts its use on animals (which I believe is where the majority of antibiotic-resistance comes from) that would be easier to pass than if you tried to restrict its use on humans, but I don't know if there's precedent for it.
It's great that we may have two new antibiotics! Now, it'd be nice to keep those for as long as possible. Is regulation on the use of these feasible? I'd think that if your law just restricts its use on animals (which I believe is where the majority of antibiotic-resistance comes from) that would be easier to pass than if you tried to restrict its use on humans, but I don't know if there's precedent for it.
antibios are rotated in and out until wild strains are vulnerable again
Good news if true. Antibiotics seem to be a bit of a Tragedy of the Commons situation though; my intuition is that people should do this but probably won't.
Is there a good explainer of the challenges of growing dirt based bacteria in the lab?
Turns out the old saying, "Let the kids play and eat dirt," might’ve been right all along—who knew? All this time, they might've been giving themselves tiny doses of natural antibacterials without even realizing it.
Now the first guy who decided to try to treat an infected wound with mold... something's wrong with that guy, but that's the nice thing about having a lot of us trying all sorts of goofy stuff. Sometimes crazy turns out to be right!
Is there a good explainer of the challenges of growing dirt based bacteria in the lab?
Turns out that growing infectious bacteria is a usually easier since they often grow in rich/meat broths at body temperatures.
A few years ago a group at Northeastern developed a device that allows single bacteria/colonies to be isolated while still in indirect contact with the soil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_chip
In situ cultivation of previously uncultivable microorganisms using the ichip https://www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2017.074 https://sci-hub.ru/10.1038/nprot.2017.074
Looks like they patented it, not sure if others are working on similar things.
To better answer your question, the inventor of the device has his own theories as to why this happens (although I like my idea better)..
The phenomenon of microbial uncultivability https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13695...