41–50 of 86 posts
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No, just an ear infection. More annoying than anything. Although it does supposedly carry some risk of hearing loss should it come back hard.
Wait, how did you figure this out? I worry about having some sort of chronic infection..
The most understated portion of the article is that there is a method discovered that can kill biofilms. The discovery of new antibiotics and delivery techniques leaves me less optimistic for long-term change in the availability of life-saving antibiotics. I suspect bacteria can, and will, evolve around almost any mitigating technique we develop. Yet I'm optimistic, because tools that crack biofilms are a new are of…
>I suspect bacteria can, and will, evolve around almost any mitigating technique we develop. That's a baseless suspicion. Bacteria are ultimately bound by physical laws, and while they've proven resilient, there's no reason to suggest we will be unable to develop the means to annihilate them at will. Humans are creative - bacteria just evolve fast. I agree about the importance of the biofilm claim, but what they don'…
Humans are creative at killing bacteria, though it's already not difficult to "annihilate them at will". It's much harder to annihilate only the ones we don't like, only the ones that harm us, and only the ones that pose the greatest risk.
Some background, based on quick research, not personal knowledge, so please correct if anything's wrong: This class of antibiotics, ADEP, was discovered as a naturally produced substance isolated from the bacteria Streptomyces hawaiiensis in 1985 ( Streptomyces has been a fertile source of naturally occurring antibiotics). After some promising results, there was work on synthetically synthesizing it and producing "op…
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This won't completely replace traditional antibiotics. As the article states this acts on Gram positive persister cells (a very specific group). The coming storm is from Gram negative bacteria such as Klebsiella, Actinetobacter and Pseudomonas. There is actually very little activity occurring in the field of antibiotic drug discovery and you identified the issue; no money in drugs that someone takes for 14 days and s…
"no money in drugs that someone takes for 14 days and stops. Pharmaceutical companies are driven by stockholders" You wonder of course why, if that is the case (and I do agree), that the government doesn't get involved with more funding or subsidies for these types of less profitable drugs. The same way they spend countless dollars on other things for the public good (and company profit obviously).
Apparently there are a bunch of hard problems there.
I wonder if this approach will eventually be useful in eliminating Chronic Lyme Disease.
Doubtful, as there's little to no scientific evidence that Chronic Lyme Disease is actually a bacterial infection.
See recent study on Rhesus monkeys: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...
The "no bacteria" perspective is usually based off of IDSA guidelines. Unfortunately, they've been successfully litigated against for providing incorrect information that appear to be linked to financial interests:
"My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA panelists. The IDSA's guideline panel improperly ignored or minimized consideration of alternative medical opinion and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science."
http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?a=2795&q=414284
Good summary of Lyme: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3636972/
Needless to say, we've got a lot of people we're telling that they are not sick when symptomatically they appear to be.
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>I suspect bacteria can, and will, evolve around almost any mitigating technique we develop. That's a baseless suspicion. Bacteria are ultimately bound by physical laws, and while they've proven resilient, there's no reason to suggest we will be unable to develop the means to annihilate them at will. Humans are creative - bacteria just evolve fast. I agree about the importance of the biofilm claim, but what they don'…
What I'm more concerned about is that new, creative innovations (nanobots etc) can have more sinister uses and might ultimately prove a bigger risk than our current bacteria.
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Doubtful, as there's little to no scientific evidence that Chronic Lyme Disease is actually a bacterial infection.
That's actually a bit of a dated response: See recent study on Rhesus monkeys: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... The "no bacteria" perspective is usually based off of IDSA guidelines. Unfortunately, they've been successfully litigated against for providing incorrect information that appear to be linked to financial interests: "My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by s…
To jump from "This might be a cause" to "Lets treat people with long term courses of antibiotics, which have known and often severe side effects" is a pretty serious leap in logic.
And I know very few clinicians who would tell someone who believes they're suffering from "Chronic Lyme" that they're not sick. Just that they're not sick in this particular way. Non-specific, widespread inflammatory disease is something the medical community is still struggling to figure out. But antibiotics are fairly nasty drugs for "We have no way of diagnosing this, fleeting evidence for a causal link, and no population-level studies."
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>I suspect bacteria can, and will, evolve around almost any mitigating technique we develop. That's a baseless suspicion. Bacteria are ultimately bound by physical laws, and while they've proven resilient, there's no reason to suggest we will be unable to develop the means to annihilate them at will. Humans are creative - bacteria just evolve fast. I agree about the importance of the biofilm claim, but what they don'…
The problem of killing bacteria, as I see it, will increasingly become something akin to the demarcation problem of philosophy. Why would it not be? It is natural that the optimal situation for pathogenic bacteria to be in is one in which they are indistinguishable from necessary cells. It may take an extraordinarily long time, but until we are able to completely eradicate a pathogenic bacteria from the earth , we wi…
Very interesting research but it doesn't mention any negatives of ADEP4. What kind of effects could it have on the human body?
Which you don't bother with until you know the thing can work in the first place.