A slow catastrophe unfolds as the golden age of antibiotics comes to an end

[Peter1469]

A slow catastrophe unfolds as the golden age of antibiotics comes to an end

As antibiotics get less effective more people are going to die from infections.

On May 18, a team working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research here had its first look at a sample of the bacterium Escherichia coli, taken from a 49-year-old woman in Pennsylvania. She had a urinary tract infection with a disconcerting knack for surviving the assaults of antibiotic medications. Her sample was one of six from across the country delivered to the lab of microbiologist Patrick McGann.

Within hours, a preliminary analysis deepened concern at the lab. Over the next several days, more sophisticated genetic sleuthing confirmed McGann’s worst fears.


There, in the bacterium’s DNA, was a gene dubbed mcr-1. Its presence made the pathogen impervious to the venerable antibiotic colistin.

Read more at the link.

[Crepitus]

Overuse in both humans and animals is a bad thing.

[Peter1469]

Overuse in both humans and animals is a bad thing.

True. Most people don't understand how much a problem the overuse in animals is.

[Crepitus]

True. Most people don't understand how much a problem the overuse in animals is.

Could literally be the death of us all.

[Peter1469]

Could literally be the death of us all.

Just as antibiotics leave a few bugs behind (and their offspring grow stronger), so shall humans.

[Crepitus]

Just as antibiotics leave a few bugs behind (and their offspring grow stronger), so shall humans.

We hope.

[waltky]

Experts get together to decide what to do about Falling Effectiveness of Antibiotics...

Top Officials Gather at UN to Address Falling Effectiveness of Antibiotics
September 22, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Dire warnings about the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance worldwide prompted an urgent high-level meeting at the United Nations in New York Wednesday. Thousands of attendees, including heads of state, representatives of the private and public sector, NGOs and the pharmaceutical industry came together to discuss the proper use and misuse of antibiotics and what to do about it.

Antimicrobial resistance occurs when antibiotics and other drugs that were once used successfully to treat bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi no longer work to fight infections. Used improperly, the once-miracle drugs cause microbes to develop mutations that render them ineffective. The misuse and overuse of antimicrobials in treating human ailments is not the only source of the problem. Antibiotics are widely used in farming and to treat animals. Traces of the drugs from human waste and drug manufacturing leech into the soil, contaminating wells, rivers and other sources of water used for bathing and drinking. Each year, millions of people die for lack of effective treatment for diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia.

Earlier this month, the World Bank issued a report on the economic implications of antimicrobial resistance. The report, entitled “Drug Resistant Infections: A Threat to Our Economic Future,” concluded that antimicrobial resistance has the potential to cause a level of global economic damage possibly worse than the 2008 financial crisis. The published research showed low-income countries could lose more than 5 percent of their gross national product, pushing as many as 28 million people in developing countries into poverty by 2050. Unlike the 2008 financial crisis, the World Bank went on to say there would be no prospects for a cyclical recovery in the medium term, as the costly impact of antimicrobial resistance would continue.

Antibiotic pills. Antimicrobial resistance occurs when antibiotics and other drugs that were once used successfully to treat bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi no longer work to fight infections. Used improperly, the once-miracle drugs cause microbes to develop mutations that render them ineffective.

Adrian Thomas, head of market access and global public health for the drug manufacturer Johnson and Johnson, remembered the slow initial response to last year’s Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Thousands of people died before international and local health agencies and officials mobilized resources to tackle the problem. Thomas said something similar could happen on a massive scale, causing widespread human misery, death and economic instability to nations if antimicrobial resistance is not addressed on a global scale. “We can predict today that that’s going to happen. We know resistance is killing people today all over the world and will just kill more people and will cost more. We need to invest in it now, today, not wait for it to get worse,” said Thomas. Johnson and Johnson was one of about a dozen drug manufacturers represented at the high level U.N. meeting.

The companies pledged to try to achieve four goals by the year 2020. They include helping to make sure that antimicrobials are used correctly by people who need them by developing better diagnostics tests, increasing access to effective, not counterfeit, drugs, lessening the environmental impact of drug manufacturing and increasing collaboration with government organizations to develop new antibiotics and vaccines. “People often say, well, who’s going to pay for this? And the answer is if we don’t do it, we’re going to pay for it anyway. So, this should be seen by governments, by society, by the industry as a really strong investment decision to start working and solving these problems now,” said Thomas. The World Health Organization, World Bank and other entities affiliated with the U.N. will work to pull together a plan of actions and report back to the general assembly in 2018 on ways to fight antimicrobial resistance, a growing global menace.

http://www.voanews.com/a/top-officia...s/3520272.html

[waltky]

Children risk contracting drug-resistant infections after taking antibiotics... Infections in children linked to antibiotics Fri, Dec 02, 2016 - Children are at substantially increased risk of contracting drug-resistant infections in the months after taking a course of antibiotics, a British public health official said.

Paul Cosford, medical director at Public Health England, on Wednesday told members of parliament that children are 12 times more likely to contract drug-resistant infections in the three months after being prescribed antibiotics, suggesting that their unnecessary use poses a direct risk to individual patients, as well as a broader threat to society as a whole. “We’ve got good evidence that if you or I have a course of antibiotics now, within three months our risk is three times to get a resistant infection of some sort because we’ve had the antibiotics affecting all the organisms in our bodies,” he told the Science and Technology Select Committee. He said the figures, based on two major reviews, highlighted the need to continue driving down reliance on the drugs. “There is a growing body of evidence that taking antibiotics makes it more likely that your next infection will be a resistant one, so prudent use of these life-saving medicines is essential,” he told reporters. The study cited by Cosford, in fact found that children who had urinary tract infections (cystitis) were 13.23 times as likely to have contracted drug-resistant strains if they had been given antibiotics in the previous six months. In a previous survey, 90 percent of general practitioners said they come under pressure from patients to hand out the antibacterial medication, while 45 percent said they had done so knowing it would not help. Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh, said that the figures matched his qualitative experience from the clinic. Antibiotics pose a risk of subsequent illness, because the drugs do not uniquely target the infection, but also eradicate useful bacteria in the gut, he said. In the ecological niche that opens up after a course of antibiotics, opportunistic infections can spring up. “Antibiotics are a good thing when prescribed correctly, but they can have longer-term disadvantages of all kinds,” Woolhouse said. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worl.../02/2003660435

[waltky]

Dis lil' piggy went to market...

WHO To Farmers: Stop Giving Your Animals So Many Antibiotics
November 7, 2017 - The World Health Organization, worried about an increasing epidemic of drug-resistant infections, has thrown its considerable weight behind the campaign to cut the use of antibiotics in pigs, chickens and cattle that are raised for their meat. The WHO is calling on governments to follow the example of Denmark and the Netherlands, which have banned the use of these drugs to make animals grow faster, or simply to protect healthy animals from getting sick.

The "over-use and misuse of antimicrobials" has occurred both in human medicine and on farms, says Marc Sprenger, a scientist at WHO. But in sheer quantity, the amount of antibiotics used on farms far exceeds what's used to treat people in many countries, including in the U.S. "It's very important that we reduce use in human medicine and in animal production," says Kazuaki Miyagishima, director of the Department of Food Safety at the WHO. The WHO has now issued its first formal guidelines for how these drugs should be used on farms. According to these guidelines, antibiotics cannot be used to promote faster growth or merely to prevent disease in healthy animals. The WHO called on veterinarians to avoid the use of antibiotics that are most critical in human health. The agency also wants governments to ban the use in animals of any new antibiotics that scientists may discover in the future.

These guidelines are stricter than current policies in the U.S. The Food and Drug Administration has worked with drug manufacturers to ban the use of antibiotics to promote faster growth, but it still allows veterinarians to prescribe these drugs for the purpose of disease prevention. The greatest impact of the new guidelines, however, may be felt in countries like China, home to more than half of the world's pigs, where antibiotics have been used even more heavily than in the U.S. "It's fair to say that they use more than the U.S., but I don't know how much more," says Jishu Shi, director of the U.S.-China Center for Animal Health at Kansas State University.

A piglet gets a shot of antibiotic at a farm in Illinois. The World Health Organization is calling for strict limits on antibiotic use in animals raised for food. The guidelines could push many countries, including the U.S., to restrict drug use on farms.

Shi says policies in China are changing, however. The Chinese government is starting to require that some antibiotics only be used in animals if prescribed by a veterinarian. In addition, some Western food companies are pushing their Chinese suppliers to reduce or even eliminate antibiotic use. McDonald's, for example, has promised to buy only chickens from suppliers that have stopped using drugs that are most important in human medicine. This policy will go into effect starting next year for suppliers in the U.S. and Europe, but only in 2027 for suppliers in China. The effects of overusing antibiotics don't stop at national borders, because drug-resistant bacteria can spread around the globe, compromising the ability of drugs to fight infections. "Antimicrobials are a global public good, and we all should be working together to preserve them," says Awa Aidara-Kane, coordinator for the Department of Food Safety at the WHO.

Public health advocates in the U.S. praised the WHO's new guidelines. David Wallinga, with the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote in a blog post: "let's hope the strong new WHO Guideline spurs more companies and more countries to take the actions that need to happen. Before it's too late." The National Pork Producers Council, on the other hand, condemned the WHO's proposals to ban the use of drugs for disease prevention, and to stop using drugs that are most critical for human health. According to the NPPC, such a ban "is antithetical to pork farmers' and veterinarians' moral obligation to care for their pigs."

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt...ny-antibiotics

[Peter1469]

They have to because they keep them in filthy, inhumane conditions.

That is why I get my meats from a local farmers market.

Dis lil' piggy went to market...

WHO To Farmers: Stop Giving Your Animals So Many Antibiotics
November 7, 2017 - The World Health Organization, worried about an increasing epidemic of drug-resistant infections, has thrown its considerable weight behind the campaign to cut the use of antibiotics in pigs, chickens and cattle that are raised for their meat. The WHO is calling on governments to follow the example of Denmark and the Netherlands, which have banned the use of these drugs to make animals grow faster, or simply to protect healthy animals from getting sick.