Superbugs Predate Wonder Drugs

[Demeter]

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/08/superbugs-predate-wonder-drugs.html

In the war between germs and modern medicine, the bugs came well prepared. A new study concludes that bacteria have been resistant to modern antibiotics for far longer than humans have actually used these drugs. Indeed, the researchers isolated resistance genes from bacterial DNA preserved in ice for more than 30,000 years.

A miracle of medicine, synthetic antibiotics were first developed at the beginning of the 20th century and have been widely used only since the end of the Second World War. The first signs of resistance emerged a few years later. Since then, the development of every new antibiotic has been followed swiftly by the appearance of microbes resistant to it. With few new wonder drugs in the pipeline, some doctors are warning of a postantibiotic age, in which simple infections will become untreatable again.

Most antibiotics are based on chemicals used by bacteria or fungi to fight other bacteria, and researchers have speculated that antibiotic resistance must have coevolved with these compounds millions of years ago. Some scientists even claimed to have cultured ancient resistant bacteria from frozen Siberian soil in the lab, but those experiments lacked important controls and were never replicated, says biochemist Gerard Wright of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada: "No one ever proved this conclusively." Wright, who conducted the new study with McMaster biologist Hendrik Poinar and other colleagues, says it took his team 5 minutes to sketch the idea of the project but 3 years to carry it out.

The researchers acquired samples of soil that had been frozen for 30,000 years by drilling into sediments close to Dawson City, in Canada's Yukon Territory. To rule out any modern DNA contaminating the samples, the outside of the drilling equipment and the cores were sprayed with fluorescent Escherichia coli cells. This way, if any material leaked into the core, it would show up immediately under ultraviolet light....

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. We were born with the best antibiotics available.... the trick is to keep it kicking and if

it isn't to know what to do about it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20796315
CONCLUSIONS:

The proprietary arabinogalactan extract (ResistAid), tested in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group pilot study, increased the antibody response of healthy volunteers to the 23-valent pneumococcal vaccine compared to placebo.

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[Hugin]

3. Well...

Most antibiotics are based on chemicals used by bacteria or fungi to fight other bacteria, and researchers have speculated that antibiotic resistance must have coevolved with these compounds millions of years ago."


Yeah.

[bemildred]

4. It is a war which has been going on for billions of years.

A true Red Queen situation where you have to run like hell to keep up.

[formercia]

5. "sprayed with fluorescent Escherichia coli cells."

Now, what could go wrong? :rofl:

A dye alone wasn't good enough? These people are idiots.