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Dual action antibiotic could make bacterial resistance nearly impossible

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Re: Dual action antibiotic could make bacterial resistance nearly impossible

#81
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year I was hospitalized and quarantined for Tuberculosis, which is fairly strong against antibiotics so the antibiotic therapy is 6 months long (minimum), and that's precisely how I was treated, by combining first 4 then 2 antibiotics in order to prevent the bacteria from developing resistance, but you're right, it's super bad for your liver, I've seen heavy alcoholic patients in the same ward that were refused…

Can I inquire where that was? If you don't want to share the location, maybe you care to share more about the story? Looks interesting.

[deleted]

Re: Dual action antibiotic could make bacterial resistance nearly impossible

#82
post #80
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the best way to allow the liver to recover after such heavy medication?

I was prescribed a drug that's sold under brand name Heparegen over here that I had to take for months, apparently the active compound is called Timonacic: https://drugs.ncats.io/drug/E5913T3IBL We also had to take these pills twice a day throughout my hospital stay under the supervision of nurses who would ensure we actually take all of our medication. Also, a few months later of taking this drug, my liver is perfec…

> Dietary timonacic slows the aging process in mammals and prolongs their life span.

That's quite an interesting molecule :)

Re: Dual action antibiotic could make bacterial resistance nearly impossible

#83
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe hospitals is a bad idea then and healthcare should be more distributed, given sufficient resources. Auto doc in every crew quarters.

Unfortunately that doesn't work either as a large concentration of experts in one place is a useful feature of large hospitals. If something goes wrong you want the right expert available to help. An expert who is currently doing surgery on someone else isn't available to jump in on your problem. When things go per routine you only need the small team, but having a larger team for if things go wrong is helpful. At le…

Maybe expertise should be more widespread and communication less reliant on physical proximity?

Although I agree that I'm some scenarios teaming up is unavoidable.

But there's a spectrum between private doctors and clinic of a billionaire and huge warehouse you put sick or wounded people in mostly so they have a place to die.

Re: Dual action antibiotic could make bacterial resistance nearly impossible

#84

Don't know much about microbiology, but saw this ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSm9gJkPxU ) video about biological "motors" which allow for movement in the organisms (chemotaxis). In the end, they speculate that future antibiotics could target a bacteria's motors to disrupt its movement. Not sure how difficult will it be for the bacteria to gain resistance to this approach.

What's the issue? He has faith in something. But he's discussing the science without any religious stuff. Even then he never said anything along the lines that would compare the mechanism with creation of god or something. What's with all the hate?

Re: Dual action antibiotic could make bacterial resistance nearly impossible

#85
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that doesn't work either as a large concentration of experts in one place is a useful feature of large hospitals. If something goes wrong you want the right expert available to help. An expert who is currently doing surgery on someone else isn't available to jump in on your problem. When things go per routine you only need the small team, but having a larger team for if things go wrong is helpful. At le…

Maybe expertise should be more widespread and communication less reliant on physical proximity? Although I agree that I'm some scenarios teaming up is unavoidable. But there's a spectrum between private doctors and clinic of a billionaire and huge warehouse you put sick or wounded people in mostly so they have a place to die.

Do you know how long it takes to become a brain Surgeon? How about a Heart surgeon? Now imagine someone was both - how much more time would that take? Now if that person existed, would you want them operating on your - knowing that they have less real world experience?

Specialization is a good thing. In a complex field like medicine it is a must. There is too much for anyone one person to be an expert in it all, and experience is very valuable so again we want someone to specialize and get a lot of experience in a narrow field.

Re: Dual action antibiotic could make bacterial resistance nearly impossible

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe hospitals is a bad idea then and healthcare should be more distributed, given sufficient resources. Auto doc in every crew quarters.

Research indicates that using copper or copper alloys in hospitals reduces nosocomial infections [0], but people seem to prefer stainless steel because it looks cleaner. [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36842712/

Your summary is stronger than the conclusion of that paper. They also didn't compare stainless steel to copper, they only established copper should work. Here is a random paper I found (first when searching), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7123372/ which gives the lifespan of MRSA on copper at 6 hours, and on stainless steel at 72 hours - the important take away here is the lifespan on both is far too long so rely on surfaces and so we must disinfect surfaces not relying on their ability to kill bacteria. We also need to get health care professionals to wash their hands more - the article quotes some seriously awful handwashing rates.

Note that the above paper only quotes lifespans for a couple microbes. We care about all microbes, if even one harmful microb of any type survives we have an infection vector anyway.

Re: Dual action antibiotic could make bacterial resistance nearly impossible

#87
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bacteria can develop resistance to individual antibiotic mechanism. Then two strains can swap resistance genes to produce a super-bug: https://asm.org/articles/2023/january/plasmids-and-the-sprea... My understanding is that in this case bacteria would have to develop resistance to two mechanisms at the same time, which is much more difficult. Mandatory quote: "Life, uh, finds a way"

"Evolution is smarter than you are" - Francis Crick

Evolution isn't smart, it's just a hard worker that's extremely open-minded when it comes to results.
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